A Gathering Storm (36 page)

‘Yes.’

‘How’s the little one?’ he asked with more enthusiasm. ‘I say, this is silly. Do you have a moment? Shall we walk?’

‘I must be back at work in twenty minutes.’

‘You’re not a FANY any more, I see,’ he said, glancing at her ordinary suit as he took her arm.

‘No, clerical. The job’s dreary but it keeps us going, just.’ Michael’s gift and the money her mother was still mailing her were helping her pay the bills. ‘And, since you ask, he’s the best and brightest baby in the world.’

‘He must be quite big. Is he walking?’

‘Oh, Rafe, he’s only five months, of course he’s not. Don’t you know anything about babies? I wish I had a photograph to show you. You must meet him.’

‘Where is he?’ Rafe said, and Beatrice burst into peals of laughter, for he glanced behind him as though expecting the baby to pop out from behind the statue. ‘He’s with a child-minder, of course. You don’t imagine he comes to work with me, do you? She’s awfully good with him,’ she added, with the guilt she always felt when admitting this.

‘And what about the work? Is it terribly secret?’

‘Oh no, I’m just making myself useful at the lower levels. Typing, filling in forms, that sort of thing. I have to tear up anything I’ve done twice before I get it right. I don’t know why they keep me on really. A shortage of people, I suppose.’

He laughed. ‘I’m sure you underestimate yourself. You always did.’

‘Did I?’ She was surprised at this new view of herself.

‘God, I’ve gone and offended you now.’

‘No, you haven’t. It’s a sort of compliment.’ They smiled at one another more easily now. ‘Oh, it is good to see you, Rafe. You look so much better, you know.’ It was the first time she’d met him since the summer, when she’d been pregnant and grieving, and Rafe himself so low. Now he’d put on some weight and it suited him. His face was fuller, too, and his colour healthy. She felt a rush of affection. He was so dear and familiar, but . . . she realized he’d cleverly said nothing about himself, had adroitly turned the conversation back to her.
I know so little about him,
she thought, suddenly hurt. They had once been so close.

‘Where are you living?’ He was regarding her tenderly now.

‘With Dinah again, I told you. Did you get that letter?’

He shook his head. ‘I think some of my mail must have gone astray. I’ve already endured a severe ticking-off from my mother for not answering letters she swears she sent me. It hasn’t been easy.’

‘What hasn’t been easy?’

‘Where I’ve been. What I’ve been doing.’

‘I want to know more. Rafe, I must go back now. Are you in London for a bit? Do you have time to come and meet the baby?’

‘I most certainly do,’ he said, and this time he smiled like the old Rafe.

He came to the flat the following evening, bringing a mass of fragrant narcissi and a child’s picture book.

‘Where did you find flowers? And – oh, look, darling!’

The baby stared, large-eyed, from his mother’s arms, and buried his face in her bosom when she tried to hand him to the stranger.

‘You’re a very handsome little chap,’ Rafe said, taking him awkwardly. The child promptly reached back to Beatrice with a passionate cry. ‘But I think he wants his mother.’

‘He’s a tired boy, aren’t you, sweetie?’ she crooned, taking him again.

In the drawing room she settled herself in a chair and gave her son a bottle of milk. On the table was a tray with a whisky bottle, a water jug and two glasses. A clothes horse full of little sheets, nappies and baby suits was drying by the electric fire. ‘Help yourself to a drink, Rafe. I must put him to bed.’ When the baby had finished she bore him away, tucked him into his cot and sang to him until he succumbed to sleep.

When she returned, Rafe had removed his jacket and was drinking whisky and frowning over the evening paper. It was as though he lived there, she thought. She badly wanted to reach out and stroke his hair.

‘Have you seen this?’ he asked, tapping a blurred photograph of a plane with Japanese markings.

‘Oh, don’t, Rafe – there’s never any good news.’ She diluted her drink, still not really liking the stuff.

‘It sometimes seems like that,’ he said, folding the paper and putting it away. ‘But we don’t have to talk about it. He is bonny, your boy.’

She brightened. ‘He is, isn’t he? And thank you for his book. He’ll love looking at the animals. I mean to take him to the zoo.’

‘I’d no idea what to get for a baby. There’s nothing in the shops.’

‘My mother makes him stuffed toys and finger puppets. And Mrs Elphinstone downstairs brought up some rattles her son played with when he was a baby. She’s so anxious about her own boy. Thinks he’s in Africa but she hasn’t heard for months. Oh, I’m talking about the war again.’

‘So let’s change the subject again. How are your parents?’ he asked, sipping his whisky.

‘The same as they always are,’ she said. ‘I took the baby down to see them in January for a few days.’ In fact, the visit had been very successful. Her father, who had recently had two stories accepted by a magazine, was in an unusually cheerful state of mind. ‘
Maman
’s busy with knitting groups and fund-raising. They have their routines and still argue about the usual things.’

‘My mother drives an ambulance,’ Rafe said, in a disbelieving tone, and Beatrice, who remembered Amanda Armstrong, languid and elegant, at Angie and Gerald’s wedding, immediately understood his amazement.

‘What about you? Have you been in this country all this time?’ she asked him, trying the more direct approach.

‘Mostly. There have been long periods of training. Scotland, the Lakes.’

‘And are you expecting to be going . . . away again somewhere, soon?’ She waited, dreading his answer.

He downed the dregs of his drink and tilted the glass carefully back on the table. ‘It’s looking that way. I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything at all about it, Bea. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. They’d probably shoot me.’

‘Oh. I suppose that means it’s very dangerous?’

‘It might be. Yes.’ His expression was unreadable now and it frightened her. It was as though someone else was there, looking out from behind his eyes. How quickly they’d had to grow up. St Florian, when she visited, had hardly changed. But they had.

‘The horses have gone,’ she said suddenly.

‘What horses?’

‘When I was in Cornwall a year ago, Jezebel and the ponies were still at Carlyon, though troops are billetted at the house. But this time I walked up there, just to see, and the horses had gone.’ There had been no one guarding the gate, and she’d walked all the way up to the stables unchallenged. ‘The stalls had been cleaned out and were being used for storage. The soldier I spoke to there didn’t even know who Old Harry was, let alone where he might be living.’

‘Harry will be all right. He had family round there, didn’t he? I remember him telling me once. It’s the horses. I don’t like to think what might have happened to them.’

‘Nor me,’ Beatrice said, remembering the horses at the depot. ‘They have no power at all over their lives.’

‘Sometimes I don’t think we have much more than they do,’ Rafe said. ‘It’s a nightmare world we live in. And yet it’s horrible how used to it we’ve become. It’s normality, all of this now, what we have to do. The boredom of so much of it, the waiting around. And yet every day it seems there’s some new horror to read about.’ He indicated the newspaper. ‘Do we get immune?’

‘It’s how we survive, I suppose. Accept that things happen, carry on.’

‘But it’s important that we’re angry, don’t you think? That we stay angry. We’re not dumb beasts. In our own way we can fight back.’

‘I wish I felt I was doing that.’

‘You are, in your way, Bea.’

‘Filling in forms in an office?’

‘Someone has to do it. And think of your son. You have to look after him.’

‘Yes,’ she said, somewhat sadly. ‘The darling boy. It’s so dreadful that he never knew Guy.’

‘I think you are very brave, Bea.’ They were quiet for a moment.

‘I wish I could do more. It might stop me feeling frightened. If only I could do something about the future rather than waiting for others to do it for me.’

‘Are you frightened?’ He leant across and took her hand. ‘I do care, you know. I think of you often, what you’re doing and whether you’re all right. I meant what I said. You were awfully brave about Guy and—’

‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Rafe. The baby’s wonderful. And it wasn’t brave of me at all. I got on and did what I knew I had to do. It’s you who’s brave. You and all those who have to go and risk your lives.’

Being so close to him like this was a torment. For it was apparent that, even when they were together, so many things still stood between them. She could see that part of his mind was far away, on something else – the whatever it was he had to do. There was the past, too. She wondered if he knew that Angie was expecting his brother’s child? She hadn’t been brave enough to raise the subject.

And with her own circumstances, as an unmarried mother, she dared hope for nothing. She still thought of Guy, often. How could she not when she saw him in their son all the time? But she knew, too, that her feelings for Rafe were the same as ever, although she was more wary now, tougher, and she had her baby to consider.

It was a big thing, to take on another man’s child. Rafe knew all about that from the child’s point of view, had himself suffered from losing his father and gaining a stepfather. No, she told herself not to hope for anything from Rafe.

They arranged to meet again, and over the next few days at work she found it difficult to concentrate for thinking of him. Saturday afternoon came, and they tucked the baby in his pram and went to the zoo in Regent’s Park. Although there were some empty cages, it was surprising how many animals were still there.

‘Do you suppose they’re on rations?’ Rafe joked, when the sea lions all emerged from their pool and trailed hopefully behind them round the enclosure.

‘If they’re eating what’s considered inedible by us they must be in a bad way,’ Beatrice said, thinking of the gristly chops Dinah had recently wrestled out of the butcher, part of their meat allocation for the week.

‘You don’t suppose he finished up on our dinner-plates, do you?’ Rafe whispered, seeing that the giant panda’s cage was empty.

‘Eugh! That’s horrible,’ Beatrice cried. She lifted the baby out to see the monkeys, but regretted it when some primal instinct sent him rigid with fear. She cuddled him into her shoulder.

For lunch they ate thin soup and rice pudding at a café near the park. The waitress, a maternal-looking woman with a pillowy bosom, cooed at the child and told Rafe, ‘How very like you he is.’

‘That would be a miracle,’ Rafe retorted without thinking. Beatrice was hurt by this casual rejection and by the shocked look on the woman’s face.

Outside, she turned away, angry with Rafe, to clip the boy into his pram.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rafe said, contrite. ‘He is particularly handsome. It would be natural to note a likeness.’

‘Oh, you,’ she said in a dull voice. She pushed the pram briskly ahead, her heels clicking on the pavement. How could he still have this power over her? She thought she’d come so far, grown up so much. But despite all that had happened, he’d spied the hole in her armour, and through it pierced her heart. This time, she would not lie bleeding and helpless. She’d survive.

Still she couldn’t hide her hurt and, as she scrabbled for the front-door key in her handbag, he reached out and touched her cheek.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

‘Why should there be anything the matter?’ she said, pushing him away. She couldn’t work the key in the lock and smacked at it angrily, then rested her cheek against the door and closed her eyes.

‘Let me,’ he said, his voice firm, and he took the key, unlocked the door and held it open for her to wheel the pram inside.

She shut the door and in the dark and echoey hall, he took her in his arms and held her close. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I can’t help saying the wrong thing.’

‘Oh, don’t be stupid,’ she said fiercely, holding him tight. ‘It’s just everything’s so difficult.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘No, how can I be? You’ll be going away.’

Behind them, the baby started to wake and she scooped him from the pram. Tired and cross, he threw up his arms and butted her with his small head.

‘You’d better go,’ Beatrice said, trying to calm the child. ‘I’ll see you soon, shall I?’

‘Tomorrow,’ he replied, opening the door. ‘Can I come tomorrow?’

Dinah would be out until the evening. ‘Come in the afternoon,’ she said. ‘Is two o’clock all right?’

He was nearly an hour late. She went to the window a dozen times to look up the road, whipping herself into a state of worry at the thought of all the things that might have happened to him. The baby, who was teething, rolled fretfully on the rug, batting at his rattle with angry cries. When the bell of the street door rang at last, she picked him up too roughly and the stairwell echoed with his wailing.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rafe apologized, when she opened the door to him. ‘Family visitors. I couldn’t get away.’ There was tenderness in his expression and sadness, too. ‘Hello, you,’ he said to the child, tickling the tiny naked feet. The baby whimpered and buried his face in her shoulder.

Upstairs, when she’d put the baby down to play once more, Rafe came to her and kissed her; her mouth opened to his in astonishment. His lips moved over her face. He drew the tip of his tongue down her neck, which made her whole body tingle. Slowly they drew apart.

If you’ll watch him, I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said, not trusting her voice to be steady.

‘Of course.’ He peeled off his jacket, threw it over the back of a chair and knelt down by the child, waving the rattle a few inches above his face. The baby stared at it with solemn eyes then slowly reached a starfish hand towards it. Rafe moved the rattle slowly to one side, so the child had to roll to reach it. Beatrice laughed, watching them together for a moment, then went to make tea.