A Gathering Storm (30 page)

‘Oh, Bea, don’t be a spoilsport, you know who. It’s Gerald. He’s been pestering me for weeks for an answer.’

‘Oh.’

‘I know what you’re going to say – that it wouldn’t be tactful, with Rafe being away – but we don’t know when he’s coming back. It might be years.’

‘Angie, that’s a horrible thought.’ But Rafe would be hurt, surely. She wondered if Gerald felt guilty about Rafe.

‘Well, there it is. And I want you to be my bridesmaid,’ she continued. ‘Mummy is thrilled, of course, though the wedding’s to be in only three weeks. That’s when Gerald can get leave.’

Beatrice couldn’t imagine Oenone Wincanton being thrilled about anything. When she had last seen Angelina’s mother, in April, she had still been very melancholy over Ed and the fact that the rest of her children were gone in one way or another. However, she imagined Oenone would be pleased. Gerald, if not of high birth, was a sound catch and clearly adored Angie. What’s more, he had got his promotion to Major and if he wasn’t the son of an earl, who really minded these days.

‘I’d be delighted to be your bridesmaid,’ she told Angie. She wondered how she’d find a dress that would fit her. ‘But I don’t know whether you’ll want me. I’ve got some news of my own, you see.’

St Florian, 2011

‘Angie and Gerald were married one lovely July day in 1941 in the Church of St Margaret, Westminster,’ Beatrice concluded. It was Wednesday afternoon, and she was tired from talking. Pouring the tea Lucy had just made, she added, ‘Very exclusive. You need special connections to be married there. I think with Angie it was her godmother, Lady Hamilton. Or perhaps Angie’s father had pulled strings. I forget which, but I was the bridesmaid. Angie didn’t mind about the baby.’

She sipped her tea.

Lucy, who had been sitting quietly for a while, said carefully, ‘Why would she have minded? I’m sorry, but I’m finding some of all this quite hard. You don’t always make Granny sound a very nice person.’

‘She wasn’t sometimes, Lucy. But nor was I. I look back on myself then and think how naive I was. Everything was black and white to me, and that must have been very annoying to someone like Angie. I loved Rafe and saw him as mine in a curious kind of way. But I realized in time that Rafe was his own person; he owed me nothing, he was free to fall in love with whom he liked. And Angie clearly found him very charming – which he was; the most dear and charming man you could ask for.’

‘Do you think she was in love with him when she said she’d marry him?’

Beatrice thought for a moment. ‘I think she might have been in her own way but it wasn’t a lasting thing, rather something delightful and of the moment. And then she met Gerald and he really was the man for her. The bomb blast – it changed her, made her grow up a little, and Gerald was part of her doing that. Being very steady and dependable, he enabled her to settle down.’

‘Do you think he made up for her father being so distant?’

‘I do, yes.’

‘I feel quite sorry for her. And for you, of course. You were both so young.’

‘We were, and having to deal with the most horrific things. However, when it came to relationships we were so awfully innocent.’ Beatrice’s expression hardened. ‘But feel sorry for Angie? I find that very difficult.’

The old lady levered herself out of her chair and went to look out of the window. ‘It might rain later,’ she murmured, ‘and Mrs P.’s left the towels on the line. I don’t suppose you’d mind . . . ? It’s the reaching up I can’t do.’

‘Of course I wouldn’t mind,’ Lucy said, jumping up. ‘I’ll get them in and then leave you for today. I’m sure I’ve tired you enough.’

‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you, dear, but I do admit to feeling a little weary,’ Beatrice agreed, sitting down once more. ‘However, you must promise me you’ll come tomorrow.’

After Lucy had gone, Beatrice sat for a while, remembering that wedding so long ago. It had indeed been a beautiful day. Angelina had worn a rather gorgeous ivory-lace dress of her mother’s, and had borrowed an apricot-coloured tea-gown for Beatrice, which Beatrice had had to let out. Gerald, in uniform, looked very proud and adoring. At the reception, held in a hotel nearby, Beatrice met Rafe and Gerald’s mother, Amanda Armstrong, for the first time and thought her cool and elegant, though perfectly gracious. The poise cracked slightly when Beatrice asked if there was any news of Rafe. There wasn’t, and she wished she hadn’t mentioned him as Rafe’s stiff, soldierly stepfather marched over and steered his wife away. For a while Beatrice stood alone, fighting back tears. Later, she caught Angie’s little bouquet when it was thrown, and stared down at it.

Gerald and Angie had two days’ honeymoon and after that, Gerald had to return to his regiment. Angie, being married, stood down from the Wrens, and they rented a cottage in the Kent countryside, near London for her and close enough for him to visit once a fortnight or so, which was as much as he could get away.

As for Beatrice, her life continued as usual, though something odd and disturbing did happen.

Since the Fall of France, her mother, Delphine, had not been able to communicate with her family in Normandy. In August she suddenly received a message on a small strip of paper from one of her nieces in Etretat, Thérèse. It had been somehow secreted to England and posted anonymously from London. It bore the awful news that Pappi had been killed by German soldiers, apparently over a misunderstanding.

Delphine sent the message on to Beatrice with a letter of her own, an outpouring of grief.

Beatrice had to drive one of the French officers that week, and she resolved to share the message with him, to ask him whether it could be true. He was an older man with a sad face, as though he felt the full weight of his nation’s humiliation. There was something about the way he held his hands – broad, countryman’s hands – one clamped over the other on his cane like a shepherd’s over his crook, that made her trust him.

They’d talked in his native language as she drove. He was from the Ardennes, she discovered; his family’s village had been one of the first to be overtaken by the German forces as they pushed their way into France and he’d only just managed to escape.

When they stopped in traffic, she fumbled in her pocket for the tiny strip of paper, and passed it to him, saying, ‘Excuse me, but may I ask what you think of this letter.’ She told him how she’d got it.

The officer found his spectacles and frowned as he worked out the tiny writing. ‘You say this is from your cousin?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Beatrice replied.

‘Well, I am most sorry about the news it contains. Your grandfather was killed.’

‘For stockpiling food, concealing it from the authorities. But my cousin says it was a misunderstanding.’

The officer’s bloodhound eyes met hers in the driving mirror. He looked sadder than ever as he passed back the letter. ‘I am indeed sorry,
mademoiselle
,’ he said. ‘But this kind of story is why I am here. This struggle belongs to us all. There is no mercy in Nazi justice, no room for doubt. This is why those who resist are in such danger.’

‘But would they have no pity? He was a very old man. Old and ill.’

The officer leaned back, uttering an oath. ‘This is why we resist,’ he said fiercely. ‘For all the grandfathers. Please convey my condolences to your mother. Tell her to thank God she has you bravely doing your part here.’

‘A little, pathetic part,’ she said angrily.

‘Add up all the little parts . . .’ he made a broad gesture with his hands ‘. . . and we will win this war. Always remember that. Do your best and believe.’

Remember
. . . Beatrice had remembered. She’d kept that little letter and had it still, at the age of eighty-eight. For years, memories were all that she’d had, and some of those she wished she could forget.

Her gaze fell on the small pile of laundry that Lucy had rescued from the line and folded. She was a lovely girl, Lucy; Beatrice was becoming very fond of her. She was surprised at her shrewdness, too. She’d thought that in telling Lucy her story it was she, Beatrice, who was enlightening Lucy. Instead, some of the things Lucy said made Beatrice think. That business about looking at events from Angie’s point of view. She’d never really thought about it before, didn’t want to. She’d always thought her own version the only one.

She stood, scooped up the pile of washing and slowly made her way with it upstairs.

Lucy walked down the steps to the harbour, where she sat in the window of a quiet café and ordered hot chocolate. She sprinkled some bits of marshmallow on top and watched them settle into the foam. She was thinking about everything that Beatrice had just told her, and realizing that she hadn’t properly considered before what her grandparents’ generation had endured in the war. She thought of Beatrice being alone, frightened and pregnant. A feeling of disquiet was stirring in her about the way the story was unfolding.

She looked up to see Anthony striding past, his holdall hefted on his shoulder. Forgetting her thoughts, she knocked eagerly on the glass. When he saw her, he ducked through the low doorway of the café.

‘Hello. You again!’ he said.

‘Were you coming or going?’ Lucy said, pushing away her cup.

‘Going. I thought I could get out on the water for a couple of hours. Like to join me?’

The sea was choppier than last time, and there was a biting wind out on the bay. But it made her feel exhilarated, alive. This time she was better at swinging the sail round at his instruction; she thought they worked well as a team. They went right out into the open sea where, looking back, she could see quite a length of the coastline.

‘There, that’s Carlyon!’ she cried, pointing to the shell of the manor house on the crest of the hill, and he turned the tiller so they could keep it in view.

Even now, it had a kind of dignity, like the ruins of a church or rather, with its high chimneys, a small palace. Now she saw it from this angle, lonely, abandoned, its charred messiness softened by misty distance, she felt a strong connection to it. And sorrow that it was a piece of her history that had been taken from her before she even knew about it.

‘How did it happen?’ Anthony called. ‘The fire, I mean.’

‘I don’t know.’

When they returned to the harbour, it was she, this time, who stepped up onto the small jetty with the mooring rope. She helped him tidy up, though her hands and face were frozen. The warmth had gone from the day, but a golden light played on the water.

‘Come back to my place for some tea, if you like,’ he said when they’d finished.

The house was one of a terrace of white-painted houses huddled halfway up the hill, not far below Beatrice’s, overlooking the bay. The glass of the porch was rimed with salt, its shelves arrayed with leggy spider plants and dusty geraniums.

Inside was tiny, a hallway with two small rooms on one side, a kitchen at the back, stairs up to two bedrooms and a little bathroom. Coming out of the bathroom Lucy glanced through the open door of the back bedroom. Anthony’s duvet was straight and smoothed, his nightclothes neatly folded on the pillow. She smiled, remembering how, in contrast, her bed at home always looked like a mare’s nest.

Downstairs, he’d already laid his sailing kit over plastic chairs to dry under the small back verandah. He handed her a huge mug of toffee-coloured tea and she sipped it quickly, though it scalded her, glad to feel the heat course through her limbs.

When they went to sit in the living room he seemed too large for the space and the tiny old armchairs. Perhaps he was used to cramped quarters. She stole a look around. A laptop, several books and DVDs, a couple of magazines were stacked on the coffee-table, though there was plenty of space on the bookshelves. The place gave the impression that he was bivouacking, that at a moment’s notice he might have to sweep everything into one of his big holdalls and rush away. The way he sat, too – on the edge of the chair, knees apart, leaning forward – suggested restlessness, but she liked the steady manner in which he studied her.

‘Whose place is this?’ she asked.

‘It belongs to the parents of a friend,’ he told her. He explained that they were kindly letting him stay there rent free. ‘And I can use the boat, too.’

‘Where’s home for you?’ was her next question. Did she imagine the shadow that crossed his face?

‘Near Hereford, I suppose. Do you know that part of the world?’

She shook her head.

‘The countryside’s lush green hills, idyllic, really. My mum’s parents were farmers and I spent a lot of time with them when I was a kid. Dad retired from the Army a few years back and they bought a place nearby.’

‘Nowhere to call your own then?’

‘No. I don’t know where I’d go, though I suppose I’ll have to decide sometime. How about you?’

‘Oh, I bought a flat in North London a few years ago. The edge of Camden. I fell in love with round there, you know, the canal, the boats, the markets.’

He smiled, briefly, then the smile seemed to cut off and a faraway look came into his eyes. Puzzled, she stood, putting her empty mug down on the table, feeling she ought to go. But he looked up at her and suddenly he seemed himself again, warm and friendly.

‘Are you doing anything later?’ he said. ‘I haven’t got much in the fridge or I’d offer to cook, but maybe we could have something out. If you feel we’ve had enough of the Mermaid, there’s a pub near the headland that does food – posh fish and chips, steak and kidney pies. What d’you say?’

‘It sounds tempting,’ she said. She longed to, but wondered whether she should. Their lives were so different. There was no reason they’d meet again. Yet she trusted him . . . felt as though she’d always known him. And she sensed that he accepted her for what she was, without even knowing her. How did that happen between people? You recognized something in each other. What if she were mistaken?

He was waiting for her answer and she knew what she wanted to say. ‘Yes. I’d like that.’

The pub turned out to be very olde worlde, with brass telescopes and fishing nets decorating the walls. It was still quiet, being early, and Anthony was sitting at the bar talking to the barman and didn’t see her arrive. He wore a soft jacket, cream shirt and dark jeans and she realized again how attractive he was, the cropped hair suiting his handsome tanned features. He saw her and greeted her with a smile that lit his eyes.