A Gathering Storm (34 page)

It was early morning, a few days before Christmas, 1941. Snow fell in soft thick flakes that iced the laurel hedges and the shaggy lawn, blotting out the sky and the countryside beyond the gate. Watching from the window of her bedroom, Beatrice, for the first time in years, was amazed actually to feel safe. The snow made it possible to believe there was no world beyond this house and garden, and most of all no war. Surely no planes could fly in this. Sussex had been given a merciful respite.

She turned as the baby mewed in his cradle and smacked his lips, but he did not come to full wakefulness, and soon sank once again into deep sleep. She noticed how he lay with his dear little fists thrust above his head like a pugilist and she smiled tenderly as she moved past him on her way to the bathroom. With luck he’d give her enough time to wash and dress.

Out on the landing the smell of toasting bread wafted up the stairs with the comfortable chinks and thuds that meant Nanny was laying the table for breakfast. Less soothing was the whine of Hetty’s voice, though what she was complaining about this time, Beatrice couldn’t make out. Across the way, Angie’s door stood firmly shut. She liked to lie in most mornings, even if Gerald was away. They had hopes that he’d come home on Christmas Eve. This is what he’d promised.

In the bathroom she washed quickly and efficiently, trying not to look at her body, which she found ugly with its great milky breasts and slack belly. Four weeks it was since the birth, and Nanny still insisted on feeding her up, as though she were a cow in calf. The woman referred to her now as Mother all the time, which was infuriating, though she tried not to let her annoyance show. She was, after all, she reminded herself, grateful to them, all of them, for taking her in and helping her, for supporting her decision to keep the baby when even her own mother had advised her to give it away. She remembered with amusement Delphine’s open adoration when she’d come up to visit when he was only a week old, how she’d held him, crooning little French endearments as she must once have done to Beatrice. It was a side of her mother that she’d forgotten.

It had been a long and difficult birth, but the staff at the hospital had been calm and caring, and Beatrice had recovered surprisingly quickly, so she’d been told. The council offices where she’d registered the birth, on the other hand, had been chaotic after a stray bomb had exploded nearby.

Back in the bedroom, she pulled on a thick skirt, a clean blouse and her cardigan, and was rolling on a pair of much-mended stockings when the baby stirred and began to wail. She reached into the cradle and pulled him, a warm, damp, struggling bundle, into her arms, the milk already burning its way through her breasts in a rush of love. She’d feed him, she told herself, as he clamped his mouth to her breast, then give him to Nanny to change and dress while she had breakfast. The room being chilly, she climbed with him back into bed, and settled herself to enjoy the peaceful sounds of him drinking, the gamey fragrance of him.

She’d first seen this child as an inconvenience, then she’d wanted him furiously, the more so after the news of Guy’s death, but she’d still not been prepared for the fierceness of her love for him, the strength of her determination to protect him and provide for him. He let go of her nipple suddenly, turning his head to stare up into her eyes, unblinking, as though learning her by heart. She was locked into his gaze, unable to look away even if she’d wanted to. ‘Oh, you little sweetheart,’ she whispered, and the spell broken he began to drink once more. She lay back against the pillows, loving this intimate moment with her child, the pleasant calm of the room, the comforting sounds of domesticity going on below, the world beyond the window, still and silent. They were safe in a cocoon where she wanted to remain for as long as she could.

Despite the make-do-and-mend of it, 1941 was the loveliest Christmas Beatrice could remember. A neighbour had given them a small goose, which in the end Nanny had to pluck and prepare, since Angie made such a terrible fuss about it. There was a Christmas pudding of sorts, and Beatrice went out herself and cut down a small fir tree that Hetty decorated with homemade paper lanterns and scraps of ribbon. Gerald arrived as darkness fell on Christmas Eve, having managed to cadge a lift from a senior officer, and they spent a merry evening playing games with Hetty, lighting some candles on the tree and fixing two large socks, one for each child, to the mantelpiece for Father Christmas to fill.

They were woken early next morning by Hetty’s cries of delight, for Father Christmas had managed to procure her an orange and some nuts, and Nanny had used an entire week’s sugar ration to make peppermint creams. The baby’s stocking contained a pair of mittens and two pairs of bootees, knitted by Nanny, and a toy dog with button eyes that Beatrice’s mother had made out of an old pillowcase and stuffed with cut-up nylons.

‘Are you sure the old chap can’t have a sweet?’ Gerald asked, peering at the boy on Beatrice’s lap with a mixture of wariness and wonder. It was after lunch, and they were sitting round the fire in the drawing room as the light dwindled outside. Hetty and Angie were playing Beggar-My-Neighbour at a small felt-topped table whilst Nanny washed up, which she insisted she wanted to do now that she’d heard the King’s speech.

‘No, he cannot!’ Angie cried. ‘Honestly, Bea, quite what Gerry’s going to be like when we have children I simply daren’t imagine. He hasn’t the slightest idea about what’s suitable. Hetty, you can’t do that, it’s cheating.’

‘But you’ve got all the good cards and I can’t go.’ Hetty rounded her shoulders. At thirteen, she was turning from an awkward child into an awkward adolescent. She’d been out sledding that morning after church, but she didn’t know the local children yet and hung about on the edge of their games. Beatrice felt a little sorry for her, always stuck with adult company.

‘I expect I’ll be all right making them little carts and teaching them how to shoot,’ Gerald said. ‘It’ll be rather jolly.’

‘If they’re boys,’ Beatrice pointed out, ‘and old enough.’ She’d noticed he didn’t take much interest in Hetty .

‘I wonder if the war will be over by then?’ Angie said. Hetty shrieked in triumph as her sister let her win a trick.

‘Now America’s in with us it’ll make all the difference, you’ll see,’ Gerald said. He jabbed at a log on the fire with short, savage thrusts of the poker. She wondered if he had ever had to attack a man bare-handed like that, and if he would hesitate. She shivered. As far as Beatrice could tell, he’d not seen any real action since before Dunkirk. She wondered, not for the first time, what his present role was.

When Nanny brought in a tray of tea, Hetty took it as a sign to rush over to the Christmas tree and start to distribute the newspaper-wrapped packages arrayed underneath.

Beatrice, laying the sleeping baby on the settee beside her, was touched to see Mrs Wincanton had sent something for him, a matinée jacket and leggings knitted in navy wool that looked as though it had come from an old jumper. The Wincantons had really been so kind to her. Shortly before the baby’s birth, a cheque for a considerable sum had arrived from Angie’s father. It was the only indication she’d had until then that Michael Wincanton knew of her predicament. She supposed Angie must have told him.

When the boy was a week old she’d written to Guy’s parents and told them they had a grandson. Several anxious days passed and then a letter arrived from Guy’s father. It was guarded, very guarded. He offered money, but the offer was phrased in such a negative way that she took it to be some kind of test: if she took the money she would have failed. She was particularly cross about this as, in her letter to them, she’d specifically said she wasn’t asking for money, but perhaps they’d taken the mere mention of money as a hint that she
did
want some, so she had only herself to blame. It was like a ridiculous game.

Worse was yet to come. Not long after this letter a parcel of baby clothes arrived from Guy’s mother. Beatrice was touched by this, especially since they seemed to be ones once worn by the Hurlingham children, but the short letter accompanying them, though it asked that she let them know if she needed help, suggested that it might be the best thing if Baby were to be raised by a respectable family. Beatrice had destroyed the letter, but the clothes she put away for when her son was big enough. It pleased her to think that he’d wear something of his father’s.

It was astonishing, really, that when the Hurlinghams and her own parents had judged her and found her wanting, the Wincantons, who were no relation to her at all, had welcomed this tiny collateral victim of war without question. She would always remember and love them for that, she vowed, laying the little outfit on her lap.

‘And, it’s not fair, another for you.’ Hetty held out the package from under the tree.

Beatrice took it carefully and stared at the dear familiar hand. When it had arrived the day before she’d tried to take it away to open it in the privacy of her room, but Hetty had put a stop to that, insisting that it go under the tree with the rest of the presents to be opened on Christmas Day.

It was the first time she’d heard from Rafe since September. Once, when she was still at Dinah’s, he’d sent a postcard of the Lake District and she’d hastily written him a letter back, not acknowledged. After the baby’s birth she’d written again, telling him where she was, but had received nothing until now. He must have received that letter, because he knew to send the parcel here. She tried to guess what might be inside. It was small, about the weight of a book, and knotted up with many pieces of string. Nanny handed her a pair of sewing scissors and she cut it open. She drew out two wrapped bundles. One was marked for her and the other for her son. There was a letter, too.

‘What have you got?’ Hetty asked, leaning over the arm of the sofa, and putting out a commanding hand.

‘Hetty, we don’t have rudeness,’ Nanny said.

Beatrice turned her bundles over, hardly daring to open them in case she was disappointed.

‘Oh, do hurry up, Bea,’ Angie said.

She opened the baby’s first.

‘Good Lord,’ Gerald said.

‘What an extraordinary gift for a little child,’ were Angie’s words.

‘You may say that, but I happen to know,’ Gerald said, ‘that Rafe was a baby when he was given it. By his paternal grandfather, I think.’

It was a small antique silver pistol, the handle beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Beatrice turned it over in her hands, admiring the craftsmanship, then Gerald asked to have a look. She handed it over thinking, not for the first time, that if Gerald felt any guilt for taking Angie from Rafe, he never spoke of it.

‘Sending it in the post, too!’ Nanny tutted. ‘It might have got lost or fallen into the wrong hands.’

‘What’s your present?’ Hetty asked, impatient.

An ornate silver photograph frame emerged from the second bundle. The picture was of Rafe in uniform, his face handsome, boyish, smooth. She contemplated it for a moment or two, then showed it to the others, but its presence, as though he himself were suddenly in the room, seemed to disturb everyone.

‘I wonder where he is,’ Angie said.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘I hope he’s all right.’

Gerald said, ‘I expect he will be. He’s proved himself a survivor, our Rafe.’

Nanny pushed herself to her feet and said, ‘Isn’t it time for Baby to be woken now, Mother? He’ll miss his tea.’ To Bea’s chagrin, she scooped up the sleeping child. Instantly he woke and began to yell.

Bea took advantage of the distraction to hide Rafe’s letter in her pocket.

‘I’m taking him upstairs for you,’ Nanny called behind her. Bea bundled up the gifts and took them with her as she followed.

Some time later, after Nanny had bathed the baby and laid him down to sleep, and Beatrice was alone with him, she lay on the bed and read Rafe’s letter in a pool of light from the bedside lamp. It was characteristically short.

It was a strange letter, alarming. It gave the impression that he was distributing his personal effects in case he never returned from wherever he was going. She got up and went over to the chest of drawers and picked up the gun, examining again the engraved patterns on the silver, the snug little chamber where the bullets went, though there were no bullets there. It really was a pretty piece. It spoke to her of Errol Flynn, of the swish of silk dresses, of derring-do and adventure. The handle fitted snugly in her palm. She gripped the weapon and pointed it at her reflection in the mirror, screwed up her eyes to aim, rasped, ‘Your money or your life.’ And in the glass caught sight of the cradle behind her. Horror and shame at what she was doing washed over her. She lowered the gun and swung round to look at the baby who slept innocently on.

Quickly she opened the top drawer of the chest and shut it inside. Angie was right. The pistol was a peculiar present for a baby.

Boxing Day morning, and although there was no hunt, the brave and the proud held stirrup parties. Gerald and Angie set out in stout boots to the home of some friends, taking Hetty with them. It was too cold to venture anywhere with a newborn, but Beatrice was glad of the excuse to stay at home. Angie’s friends were always perfectly civil to her, but in such situations she was visited by those old feelings of inadequacy. Besides, she loved the prospect of a tranquil couple of hours with just Nanny, preparing soup in the kitchen. Whilst the child slept upstairs she tried to read a book, but her concentration these days was shot to pieces, and her mind couldn’t help turning to anxious thoughts of the future.