A Gathering Storm (35 page)

It was so warm and peaceful by the dancing fire, the snow starting to fall again outside. She snuggled up under her rug and tried once more to read.

Nanny’s heavy footsteps could be heard overhead and her voice, talking to the baby. Soon she appeared in the drawing room with him struggling and grizzling in her arms.

‘I thought he’d slept long enough and that Mother might wish to feed him.’

‘Oh, Nanny, yes, of course,’ she sighed, putting away her book.

‘I could make him up a bottle.’

‘No, I’ll have him here.’

‘It is time he got used to a bottle. You’ll spoil him.’

‘Just a little while longer,’ she said.

‘Then we’ll change his napkin again, won’t we, my little man, then after lunch, Nanny will take you for a little walk in the perambulator.’

‘Oh, no, Nanny, it’s icy out.’

‘A little fresh air never did Baby any harm.’

It was so hard to argue with her, though Beatrice tried. What did she, Beatrice, know about looking after babies? And she was grateful to Nanny, for washing his clothes and nappies and bathing him and playing with him when he was fretful, as he often was lately in the run-up to bedtime.

The day following Boxing Day, Gerald took a train back to Devon. Warmer winds were blowing in from the south, and in the days that followed, melting snow dripped from the trees or slid, with sudden alarming thuds, from the roof. The countryside became brown and sodden and the sky was rent by planes once more. ‘At least they’re ours,’ Hetty said.

Early one morning in January, Beatrice was woken abruptly by the sound of Angie’s door bursting open and Angie’s voice pronouncing in hollow tones, ‘Oh, God’. The bathroom door slammed and the sounds of violent retching could be heard. Hetty banged on the bathroom door. ‘Angie, are you all right?’

‘No. Go away.’

Later, when Hetty had left for school, Bea was eating breakfast when Angie staggered into the dining room. The colour of her skin made Bea think of dirty dishwater.

‘Tea,’ Angie gulped, dropping onto a chair. ‘No milk.’ And her head sank onto the table.

‘Are you sure it’s something you’ve eaten?’ she asked Angie, with heavy irony, placing the cup and saucer in front of her. ‘It is the third day running.’ She was lucky not to have felt nauseous herself, but she recognized the signs in others.

Angie shook her head. ‘You know damn well what it is,’ she said. ‘I’m having a baby.’ She tried a sip of tea.

‘Angie, that’s wonderful. Does Gerald know?’

‘Yes. Eearghh,’ Angie said, and rushed out of the room.

Later she said, ‘I don’t know why they call it morning sickness. It lasts most of the day.’

‘I never had it. Do you feel better now?’

‘Much, thanks.’

They were huddled by the fire in the drawing room. Nanny had gone to bed early complaining of a cold starting, so Bea had guiltily brought the wakeful baby downstairs instead of leaving him to cry, which was what Nanny would have made her do. She’d fed him and now he was happily staring round the room at the lights and the fire and the fascinating faces of the two women.

‘But you’re pleased. About the baby, I mean?’ she asked.

‘Oh Bea, of course I am. And we’re so lucky to have Nanny to help us. She’ll be busy with two, won’t she? It’ll be like old times for her. I do hope she’ll still manage.’

‘I don’t think we should expect too much of her. How old do you think she is?’

‘Nanny? I’ve no idea. She’s always seemed exactly the same to me.’

‘And Hetty will be an aunt.’

‘Poor thing, she’s not very happy here. I wish she’d make some friends of her own age. It’s not good for her to be on her own so much.’

‘I suppose it’s my fault that we needed Nanny,’ Beatrice said. ‘Hetty would have been happier staying with her cousins.’

‘She didn’t want to be there without Nanny. I think it’s too bad of Mummy not to have Hetty. The poor girl misses her.’

‘But she can’t live in London. Your father spends all day advising mothers to evacuate their children. It would look bad if he kept his with him.’

‘Mummy should come and live down here then.’

‘You wouldn’t like that, you’d quarrel.’

‘No, we wouldn’t. Though I suppose there isn’t room for her really.’

Angie, more spirited now she wasn’t feeling so sick, was, Bea thought, looking particularly lovely, her pregnancy imparting an ethereal fragility instead of her usual healthy glow. She had changed since her marriage, Bea could see that. Gerald had settled her as no one else seemed to have been able to do, and she clung to him, and spoke of him often when he wasn’t there. She seemed happy in this small rented cottage, though there were no luxuries and they had to scrape together the basics of daily existence. And now there would be another small baby to look after.

‘Angie,’ she said gently, ‘there would be room for your mother if you wanted her. I can’t go on staying here with you for ever.’

‘Why ever not?’ Angie said, putting out her arms for the baby. ‘Let me have a go with him now.’

‘I need to get a job. I’ve no money.’ Bea passed the child over and Angie sat him on her knee where, with his head sunk into his neck wreathed by the shawl, he watched her so gravely that she burst out laughing. ‘He’s just like a little old man,’ she said. ‘Oh look, he’s smiling, Bea. Look – he’s really smiling.’

‘He did that earlier,’ Beatrice said, but sullenly. He’d not smiled like that before, not for her.

Angie’s face was radiant. ‘Yes, you smile for me, don’t you, you little darling.’ And he smiled at her wider than ever.

Bea broached the difficult subject of her departure again a few weeks later. They were walking back from the station on a muddy February day, having been shopping in the local town. It was the longest time she’d left her child with Nanny and her nerves were on edge the whole time.

Worse, the trip had brought home to her quite how penniless she’d become. Apart from Michael Wincanton’s gift, her only income was the ten-shilling cheque her mother sent her every week or so, and although her ration card came in useful for the household, she couldn’t afford to pay for much – and just suppose one of them became ill? How would she pay for a doctor? She couldn’t keep on expecting Gerald and Angie to cover the extras. But it wasn’t just that; it was the growing sense of restlessness she felt.

The road started to slope steeply upwards. She glanced at Angie. She looked tired, so she wrested one of the handles of Angie’s shopping bag from her to share the load, though she already carried one of her own. It was odd. If there hadn’t been a war, Angie wouldn’t have been shopping for food but for dresses, and in a car. She didn’t feel sorry for the Angies of this world, exactly, but she did acknowledge the adjustments the girl had made, largely uncomplainingly. And she saw how Angie was coming to rely on her. Surely this wasn’t good for either of them. She couldn’t, she felt, go on forever living here with Angie, being her poor companion.

She’d been thinking quite a lot about what she should do. She still wanted desperately to be useful in this war, not to sit back and let others win it for them. After all, Guy had given up his life, and Rafe was goodness knows where, risking his. Maybe if she was doing something more active to help she wouldn’t fret so much.

‘Can we sit down for a moment?’ Angie said. They’d reached the top of the ridge, where a tranquil view of fields and trees and little houses stretched away into distant mist.

‘Is that your place over there?’ Beatrice said, pointing to a tiny house about a mile away.

‘Yes, and that’s Nanny hanging out washing! Everything looks so ordinary, doesn’t it?’ Angie said, but even as she spoke, far away, half a dozen flashes of silver shot into the sky: planes trailing plumes of black smoke. The plumes merged together into a single poisonous cloud that floated in the still air.

‘Nothing’s ordinary any more,’ Bea said bitterly. ‘A cloud hangs over us all. Aren’t you aware of it? Look.’ She pointed far ahead. ‘The sea starts there somewhere, and then it’s just a few miles to France. So close, Angie, so close. We can’t wrap ourselves in our life here and pretend it’s not happening, that we don’t have to do anything about it.’

‘I know,’ Angie snapped. ‘I didn’t mean I wanted to shut myself away. It’s just we’ve got different ways of managing things, you and I. Gerald needs me here, and Hetty does and soon the baby will. There have to be some people doing the ordinary things, Bea, or what kind of world will there be when it’s all over?’

‘I don’t know. But I feel I can’t go on being here, doing nothing, that’s all. Angie, I don’t know what you’re going to think, but I want to go back to London. Dinah’s room is still free, I wrote to ask.’

Angie looked puzzled, then angry. ‘Bea, it’s not just you now. How will you cope with a little baby? Someone has to look after him if you’re working.’

‘I’ll find someone. People manage, you know – lots do.’

Angie stared at her for some seconds before speaking. ‘You’re different from how you used to be. Harder somehow.’

Beatrice felt hurt by this. Eventually she said, ‘I’m not, you know. I’m the same as I’ve always been, but I’m surer of myself now.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t take Baby away. I’ll miss him and I know Nanny will, too.’

‘That’s sweet and I know you will. But you’re having your own child, Angie, and you’ll both be busy enough. And when you have him, you’ll love him so much you’ll want to do anything for him, even fight for him.’

‘You’re sounding quite fierce, Bea. But there are other ways of fighting, quieter ways. You may not think much of me – no, don’t say it – but I can be strong too. I’m just different from you.’

Beatrice was quite surprised by this. Angie rarely revealed this more serious side of herself.

London, April 1942

The bus journey home was one of the times Beatrice felt happiest. If she left the office at five, she was usually safely on the bus at five past for the sleepy stop-start journey from Trafalgar Square to Camden High Street. It was partly the anticipation of seeing her baby that made her happy, but sitting on the bus was also one of her few opportunities to be quiet and think. In the mornings she struggled with the guilt and misery of leaving him, never mind the anxiety that she’d be late for work. Something always held her up now she had a young child to get ready, too.

At least it was still light now when she reached Camden. It was only a short walk from the High Street to the side road of Victorian workers’ cottages where Mrs Popham lived, but she didn’t like it much in the blackout. When she’d first moved back to London, in February, it compounded her misery that they always left home and returned there in darkness.

Mrs Popham’s was a convenient ten-minute walk from Dinah’s flat in Primrose Hill. Mrs Popham, though gentle with young children, was otherwise a prickly sort. For a start, she disapproved strongly of working mothers, which was perverse considering that she gained her income from them. And she had odd rules, one of which was that the children in her care (there were three) should each arrive with clean bottles and bowls each day, because she didn’t want the bother of washing up. The children, she insisted, must be picked up by 6 p.m. and the bills be paid in cash in advance. Beatrice didn’t think that the woman would actually cast the babies out on the street if their mothers failed to meet any of these orders, but she decided it was best not to risk it.

So far, by a miracle, she had always made it there by six, but she dreaded the day when something unexpected made her late. The aforementioned bills were the hardest bit, and she’d had to take a loan from Dinah until she finished her typing course to pay for the first two weeks’ childcare. Dinah seemed delighted to have her back, and was awfully sweet about the baby, who endeared himself to all in the house by sleeping most nights through after his busy days with Mrs Popham. His cot, though, only just fitted into Beatrice’s bedroom.

The job itself Beatrice found boring. She’d applied for clerical work in the War Office thinking that in some small way she’d be contributing to the war effort, but all she did all day was sit in a room full of other women, copying out orders for uniforms. This wasn’t in itself unimportant work – after all, service people needed to be clothed – but the mundane nature of the job didn’t engage her. What was more, it was difficult to form friendships with the other girls, who were mostly footloose and fancy free. To them, as to Mrs Popham, she was ‘Mrs Marlow’, a widow with a baby, living life in the shadows, and they left her out of their social plans.

At lunchtime, now the weather was warmer, she’d take her meagre sandwich and sit on the same low wall in St James’s Park to eat it. It was here, on one warm spring day, when clouds were chasing across the sky and wild daffodils nodded under the trees, that she noticed a young officer sitting on the steps by a statue of some long-dead General, and realized with a skip of her heart that she knew him.

‘Rafe?’ she said, standing up, her sandwich falling forgotten to the ground. ‘Rafe!’

Finally he looked up. ‘Beatrice?’ he said wonderingly, leaping to his feet. He came at once and grasped her hands. ‘How extraordinary.’

They stared delightedly at each other for a moment.

Rafe said, ‘I didn’t know you were in London. What are you doing here?’

‘I might ask the same of you. Nobody’s heard from you for months. Where have you been?’

‘I know. I’m sorry. It hasn’t been possible to write and I never know how long I’m going to be anywhere.’

This jumbled explanation disappointed her. She was angry and yet she told herself she was wrong to feel that way. He couldn’t help it, the secrecy, but she hated it all the same. It was as though he was distancing himself from her. Like some awful game of chess in which the other side was an enigma, and always a move ahead.

‘I really am sorry,’ he said again, and it was his turn to look anguished.

‘It’s only . . . we worry about you so much. Gerald and Angie, they’re always asking if I’ve heard.’

‘Are they?’ He looked and sounded miserable.