A Gathering Storm (21 page)

Beatrice was not sleeping at all well. Her dreams revolved around memories of Rafe and Angelina, the jagged nightmare snapshot of them sitting together on the sofa, or sometimes another, that she was searching for him in the dark, howling, stormy sea, and this time not finding him.

‘You’re talking in your sleep again, Marlow Do shut up,’ Hilary Vickers drawled one morning, not unkindly. Hilary, an earl’s grand-daughter, possessed a natural air of authority. She considered the other girls at Larchmont beneath her in the social scale – she was probably right – and effortlessly assumed charge. But Beatrice was grateful to her, for in her desire for control, Hilary had stamped out some of the culture of cattiness, and this year the others seemed to respect the aura of ‘keep your distance’ that Beatrice had woven round herself.

Winter gave way to spring, but she hardly noticed through her blur of misery. Another letter arrived from Rafe, extoling Angie’s sweetness and she couldn’t bring herself to reply – did he really not understand how deeply he had hurt her?

Just before Easter, there was a letter from Angelina. When she read it, Beatrice felt nothing. Part of her had been expecting it all along. Rafe’s regiment had gone abroad, Angelina wrote – to France, she thought. Before he embarked he’d asked her to marry him. She had told him she would, but hadn’t finally decided.

Slowly, Beatrice’s anger grew. Angie seemed to be treating something as serious as a proposal of marriage as lightly as an invitation to tea. Worse was the knowledge that Rafe was possibly in the front line and there was nothing she could do but hope and pray that he’d be all right. She considered writing to him via his regiment, indeed twice started letters, but found she couldn’t keep her anger off the page. He wouldn’t need that from her at the moment.

Two weeks after Easter, important news began to arrive from Europe. The war had finally got underway and it wasn’t going well for the Allies.

Hitler invaded Norway. In May his troops swarmed into Belgium and Holland. Allied troops fled to Dunkirk and were rescued by a heroic flotilla of little boats. France lay open to the enemy, her borders inadequately defended. In the end they were easily breached. On 22 June 1940, France surrendered to the enemy.

Delphine’s anguish was terrible. Her letters to Beatrice became long, distracted scrawls, betraying anxiety for her family, distress at the lack of news. Beatrice, too, was troubled, thinking not only of Rafe, wherever he might be, but of the vulnerable elderly couple, her grandparents, in their isolated Normandy farmhouse. Pappi was known to be excitable and, as her mother wrote, quite capable of resorting to his rifle if upset. He wouldn’t have a chance against German soldiers. At least his sons, Delphine’s brothers, were nearby.

Exams loomed. Somehow, Beatrice mustered some spirit and got through. Two and a half weeks to the summer holidays. Still she did not know what she was going to do with herself. Her parents expected her to return home to St Florian for the holidays, but to what? Their suffocating lives, locked into the roles of invalid and nurse? The knowledge that up the road lay Carlyon Manor with all its memories and dashed hopes? Going home meant going backwards. A whole summer of this, then back to Larchmont for the final year. For what, when the future was so bleak, uncertain? She badly wanted to do something useful now, not least something that would occupy her thoughts.

It was two weeks before they broke up that news came, in a letter from Angelina. Beatrice took it outside and sat in the sun on the sloped roof of the air-raid shelter to read it, but was unable at first to take in what it said.

I thought you’d want to know at once
, Angelina had written.
Rafe is missing.

At once she was plunged into further misery. No one knew if Rafe was alive or dead. In the confusion after the Fall of France it was difficult to gauge what had happened to many stranded troops. There was nothing anyone could do except wait for more news.

Waiting. As Germany sealed off Europe to the Allies, and Italian troops surged into Northern Africa, Britain was isolated. Fear of invasion clouded everyone’s thoughts. As for Beatrice, what could a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl possibly do about anything?

It was Hilary Vickers, the earl’s grand-daughter, who saved her, telling her about the horses.

‘My cousin’s working there. They take horses and ponies that have been brought in for Army use, dozens of them, and train them to pull wagons or carriages for ceremonial duties, then most are sent abroad. Some are fine animals – it’s awful to think of, actually. All Daddy’s lovely hunters are gone. It was the first thing he did after war was declared. “I’m too old to fight Hitler,” he told us, “but by God my horses will do it instead”.’

The place in question was a remount depot in Leicestershire. Beatrice wrote to them before she could have second thoughts, outlining her experience at Carlyon’s stables and asking if they’d have her. A week passed without any word. Then came a letter from a Captain Browning, a contact of Hilary’s cousin.

You are required to present yourself at the Superintendent’s Office at 0800 hours on 7
^th
July. Since there is no accommodation for females on site, I have arranged for you to lodge with a Miss Catherine Warrender, The Poplars, George Street. She expects you the evening before.

Bea read this with a mixture of excitement and dismay. What had she done? She wrote at once to her parents, and the letter resulted in a summons to the Headmistress’s study.

Miss Pettifer, a tall, thin woman with an imperious air, folded her hands in her lap and regarded Beatrice thoughtfully.

‘I received a telephone call from your mother this morning,’ she said. ‘She was in a state of some agitation, and when she read me out the letter you’d sent her, I understood her disquiet. You’re only seventeen, Beatrice. I was imagining that we would have the pleasure of your company at Larchmont for another year, and that you’d take your Higher Certificate, but it appears that you have other plans.’

‘Yes, Miss Pettifer, I’m sorry.’

‘Do explain yourself. It appears that you, an educated young woman, wish to work with, er, horses?’

‘Yes.’ Her gaze slipped past the Headmistress, to the tranquil country garden outside. Somewhere nearby, the comforting sounds of a tennis game could be heard.

‘I want to be useful,’ she told Miss Pettifer. ‘I can’t stay here. I just can’t.’ She couldn’t find the words to explain that she felt enclosed, trapped by boarding school, but that nor did she want to go home. In all honesty she didn’t see where her future lay. All she knew was that she wanted to get out, to go somewhere and do something.

Miss Pettifer studied her for a long moment. Finally she said, ‘Beatrice Marlow, you’re an able girl, very able. In normal times I’d have said that you should try for university. But these are not normal times. And I detect that for some reason, you are not happy. What makes you think you’d feel better doing what is only likely to be rough, manual work?’

‘I don’t know that I’d be happier. But I love horses and it would be doing something. Not being stuck here – I mean, sometimes I feel I’m going mad.’

Miss Pettifer smiled. ‘I hope we aren’t so terrible a place.’

‘No, of course not, I’m sorry.’

Miss Pettifer sighed. She opened a drawer and took out a sheet of writing paper, then unscrewed her fountain pen. When she had finished the letter, she passed it across the desk to Beatrice.

‘You’ll need this reference,’ she said. ‘I’ll speak to your mother and explain that we can’t force you to stay, especially since you’ve been offered war work. But be sure to write to them every week. They worry about you.’

‘I know,’ Beatrice whispered.

‘You’re an unusual girl,’ Miss Pettifer said. ‘But resilient, I think. I remember, when I was your age . . .’ The Headmistress, who had always seemed so poised, gave her a girlish smile. ‘But life is different for women now. Perhaps you will have chances that I never had. Beatrice, I sense your path may not be smooth. “Follow the truth.” That’s what we try to teach our girls here.’

‘The school motto,’ Beatrice said.

‘That’s right. But I must give you another piece of advice.’ She leant forward slightly. ‘Follow your heart.’

Beatrice nodded, not quite sure what she meant, but felt a thrill pass through her all the same.

‘And now I think our little interview is over. You’ll attend lessons for the duration, and when you do leave, it’ll have to be quietly. I don’t want to unsettle the other girls.’

‘Of course. Thank you, Miss Pettifer.’

‘Perhaps you’ll find time occasionally to write. I like to hear how our girls get on.’

Beatrice nodded, and shook the outstretched hand.

She took the letter up to her dormitory, intending to pass it on to Captain Browning unread, but when she made to place it in her drawer she saw that the envelope was unsealed. Miss Pettifer, perhaps, had intended her to know its contents.
To whom it may concern
, it started. She read on, amazed.

Dizzy with astonishment, Beatrice read it again. For the first time in her life she felt she was someone who mattered.

Leicestershire, July 1940

‘Bert’s vicious; you’ve got to watch him. Look what he did to me a few weeks back, the tinker.’ The girl, Tessa, pulled her overall down her shoulder to show Beatrice a puckered bite wound marring her creamy shoulder, still livid. ‘Didn’t half hurt, I can tell you.’

‘That’s awful,’ Beatrice said, looking up nervously at the great bay horse in his stall. ‘What’s with matter with his eye?’ The horse flicked his ears back and watched them warily out of one rolling eyeball. The lid of the other drooped. Now she was growing used to the gloom of the stable she could make out long scars on his flank and chest. ‘Why, the poor old thing. Who did that?’

Tessa shrugged. ‘He’s an old cavalry charger. Came off the boat from India. He’s not the only one to be badly treated there. No wonder he likes to get his own back on humans.’

‘How could anyone do that?’ Beatrice whispered, putting out her hand to the animal, but Bert backed away.

‘Careful,’ Tessa said. ‘It’s shameful, that’s what it is, hurting an innocent beast.’

They moved on past him to the next stall. ‘This one’s Sunny. By name and nature.’ Tessa rubbed the nose of a gentle grey mare. ‘Yes, you’re a darling, aren’t you? And them two over there –’ a pair of quiet draught horses ‘– are Pip and Wilfred.’

Beatrice patted them and stared along the long line of stalls, wondering how many horses there were in here – two dozen perhaps, and this was only one of many rows of shelters at the depot.

It was her first day. She’d arrived by train at the Midlands market town the previous evening and found her way easily to the address Captain Browning had given her. Miss Catherine Warrender, her landlady, lived in a pretty, pebble-studded townhouse, the short front garden rampant with hollyhocks. Miss Warrender herself was a tall, heavily built woman in her fifties, with a deep, cultured voice and a cheerful disposition. She knew Colonel Flanders who was in charge of the depot, which is why she’d been asked to put up Beatrice. Beatrice liked her at once and liked the comfortable bedroom she was given, which looked out onto a small orchard with a beehive, and a pair of tethered goats, later introduced to her as ‘my girls, Moony and Belinda.’

‘Dinner’s at seven and the water will be hot at six. I expect you’ll like to wash and change after you’ve been with the horses.’ Miss Warrender left her to unpack.

Dinner, it turned out, was prepared by Miss Warrender herself, as was everything else in the house. Beatrice discerned that she’d fallen on hard times and was probably grateful to have a lodger.

Today, Captain Browning, fortyish, pale and flabby, had given her several forms to sign before handing her into the care of an ageing NCO with a rough countryman’s face. This was Sergeant Dally, the head groom.

Sergeant Dally had greeted her without meeting her eye. As she walked with him across the stableyard he remarked, ‘We don’t want women here. They upset everything.’ Then he left her with this local girl, Tessa Hill, one of only two other females at the depot.

‘Don’t let ‘im get to you,’ Tessa whispered, seeing Beatrice’s stricken face. ‘Once the men see we do the work same as them, they treat us all right,’ she said. ‘Oh, and you have not to mind the language.’

Tessa helped Beatrice pick out the smallest pair of overalls from the store, though these were still baggy on her, and was now showing her the half-dozen horses and ponies she was being allocated to feed, muck out and groom every day. ‘And that’s before the exercising and the training, I’m warning you,’ she said. ‘Come on, we’d better get started.’

Beatrice loved the job at once, though it was hard physical work and she got very tired. Sometimes, waking in the mornings, her legs and hips felt weak and tingly a result of the polio, she supposed, and she’d lie there willing herself to get up. That was the only time she allowed her thoughts to crowd in.

The work did help keep her mind off things, in particular the awful dragging anxiety about Rafe. It was always there, in the background, but most of the time she was too busy or too tired to think about it. Sometimes she asked herself why she’d come, and it gradually dawned on her that she’d been running away, just running, without knowing where she was running to. It wasn’t a bad place that she’d found herself. She didn’t know how long she’d stay here, but for the moment it suited her.

The majority of the horses were being trained to pull heavy wagons. Tessa didn’t know where they would end up; maybe in terrain where trucks couldn’t go, it was supposed, or where there was no petrol. Some would become police horses, and some of the more aristocratic steeds would be used for ceremonial duties.