Kissed a Sad Goodbye (34 page)

“No. I was thinking the same thing, but I was ashamed to admit it.”

“Were you?” His arm brushed against hers as he moved closer; she could feel the warmth of his body protecting her from the small breeze that moved the river air. She thought of the way he had held her, and of the feel of his hand against the small of her back, and she shivered.

“Cold?” He put his arm round her shoulders and pulled her closer. “Who would you be, then, Teresa? For an hour or two. What would you want to do?”

Glancing up at him, she gave a mute shake of her head. She shouldn’t even think it—how could she possibly say it?

“Tell me,” he urged, and she felt his breath against her cheek. She closed her eyes.

“With you. I’d want to be with you.” She felt as if she were falling into an abyss.

He bent his head and brushed his lips against her throat. “Like this?”

“I … Reg—” He had placed his hand on her back, beneath her short linen blouse, and whatever weak protest she’d been about to make died on her lips. He moved his hand, stroking the soft skin on her side, then ran his fingers under the edge of her bra beneath her breast.

She jerked away, whispering, “We can’t—not here—someone will see—”

“Then we’ll go. Don’t move. I’ll call us a taxi.”

In a few moments they were away, clutching at each other in the bouncing darkness of a black cab’s interior; and then they were spilling out onto the pavement in front of her building. She felt dizzy, although she’d hardly touched the second pint of ale, and arm in arm they walked to the lift and down the corridor to her flat, where she fumbled the key into the lock.

He had her blouse off by the time they’d crossed the sitting room, and she had one fleeting and dismissive thought of her balcony-usurping neighbor and her open blinds before they reached the bedroom and fell panting onto her bed.

In the end, it was disappointing, his erection dwindling away at the crucial moment. Groaning, he rolled away from her. “I’m so sorry, love. ‘Sorry’—that’s all I seem to be able to say to you.”

“It’s all right,” she said softly.

“No it’s not.” He turned back to her, propping himself on one elbow and cupping her breast with his other hand. “It’s not you, love. You have to know that. I wanted—”

“I know what you wanted. It’s all right.” She pulled his head down to her breast and held him, stroking his back, and she was suddenly filled with a fierce and unexpected tenderness. When he had drifted off to sleep, she slipped her numb shoulder free and lay beside him until the windows paled, wondering what she felt, and how she could begin to justify what she had done.

I
N THE LONG SUMMER OF
1940, Lewis and William learned to identify planes. Edwina had managed to procure black silhouette cards from a friend in the Royal Observer Corps, and every free afternoon they bicycled up into the hills and found a spot where they could scan the sky, cards at the ready
.

The approaching drone of an engine brought a rush of excitement, and they soon recognized some planes from the
engine noise alone. Junkers 88, Heinkels, Messerschmitts, Wellingtons, Blenheims, Lancs—they wagered on their favorites. At first the German planes were only occasional raiders, and after the first few it didn’t occur to the boys to be afraid
.

To them the war still seemed a distant and imaginary thing. They played “English and Germans” with the other children in the village streets, and in the dark evenings they sat round the kitchen radio with John and Cook, listening to Tommy Handley’s ITMA and “Appointment with Fear,” which made them feel much more frightened than the news broadcasts, and Lewis learned to imitate Lord Haw-Haw so well that he kept Cook in stitches
.

But as the weeks passed, more and more airplanes passed overhead and the radio broadcasts became more dire. France fell and Italy entered the war; John Pebbles joined the Home Guard, drilling on the Downs with an old shotgun borrowed from the Hall’s gun room; Holland fell, then Belgium, and people began to say that on still nights you could hear a distant rumbling, the sound of the guns in France. Lewis got himself up in the small hours on several occasions and went out in the yard to listen, but all he ever heard was the hooting of the owl that lived in the barn and the shuffling noises made by the horses
.

In June, when the evacuations began from Dunkirk, Winston Churchill, now prime minister, pledged over the wireless, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender,” and Lewis tried hard to imagine that there were people fighting, and that his brothers were somewhere among them. Inspired by Mr. Churchill’s valiant words, he and William had long discussions about how they would resist if they were invaded, and in a clearing in the woods they made a makeshift shelter from an old tent of Mr. Cuddy’s and some tinned goods they had begged off Cook
.

Then, one night in late July, Lewis was awakened by the sound of an explosion. Struggling into his clothes in
the darkness, he ran down the stairs and out into the stable yard. Sparks floated above the treetops in the direction of the village, winking out as he watched. Then there was another crack of sound, followed by a jet of flame shooting up above the trees, and Lewis heard the sound of shouting
.

“What is it? Did you see?” William came banging out the kitchen door, still tucking his shirttail into his trousers, and after him came Edwina, and then Mr. Cuddy in a dressing gown over trousers and braces, his hair standing on end. John appeared last, jogging down the hill from his cottage, the shotgun in his hand glinting in the faint light
.

“I heard engines before the explosion,” John told them. “There’s a plane down, and the sooner we get there the better. There’s some in the village that might do something daft.”

A meaningful glance passed between John and Edwina. “Terence Pawley?” she asked
.

John nodded. “Among others.”

Lewis knew that Mr. Pawley’s son Neville had been reported missing in France last week and that Mr. Pawley had been ranting wildly about getting his hands on Germans
.

“Right.” Edwina sighed. “Come on, you two. You’re old enough to make yourselves useful.”

“I’ll get the car—it’s quicker,” John said, and ran for the garage
.

Mr. Cuddy tightened the belt on his dressing gown. “I’m coming with you.”

Edwina turned back to him and said, “No, you’d better stay here, Warren. I need you to organize relief, if it’s needed. The boys can act as runners.”

Then John brought the Bentley round and the three of them piled into it and they were off down the drive. The sky above the village had begun to glow faintly red, lighting the way, and Lewis thought suddenly of how long the journey from village to house had seemed to him the first night he had come here, when the way was unfamiliar. His
stomach clenched with anxiety at the thought of what they might find. He knew Edwina had been tactful as well as practical with Mr. Cuddy. The villagers had learned that the tutor spoke German: with feelings running high, there had been some talk of his being a spy
.

John drove as fast as the blackout would allow, and as they rocketed round the last corner flames sprang from a crater gouged in one side of the village green, and out of the flames rose a bent, black shape: the tail of a plane—no, two planes, charred and twisted together in an obscene embrace
.

As they spilled out of the car and ran towards the gathered onlookers, the smell caught Lewis in the throat—the hot oiliness of burning fuel combined with the sickly sweetness of roasting meat
.

“What’s happened?” he heard Edwina ask
.

“A Wellington bomber,” a man said, and when he turned towards them Lewis saw that his face was streaked with soot and sweat. “Must have collided with the German plane. We couldn’t get anyone out.”

“Roasted,” said Terence Pawley beside him, with what sounded almost like glee. “The lot of them. Serves them right, bloody Huns.”

“Shut up, Terence.” The sooty-faced man turned towards him angrily. “There’s our boys dying in there as well.”

Lewis thought he heard a faint sound, an echo of a scream, and the smell threatened to rise up in his throat and choke him. He was able to make it to the edge of the green before he threw up his supper. And then he realized that he was crying, and that William was beside him, white-faced with distress
.

“They must have known they were going to die, trapped like animals,” William said, but Lewis only straightened up mutely and wiped a shaking hand across his mouth
.

They watched from a distance until the flames died and the wreckage took shape in the slow-spreading dawn. The
German plane was revealed as a Junkers 88, and there were bits of both planes scattered all over the village. “A miracle,” everyone murmured, that none of the houses had been hit. As the day wore on, it became evident that the debris was not strictly mechanical—the postmistress fainted dead away upon finding a severed leg in her garden, and other grisly bits of human remains continued to turn up for days afterwards. The younger children hunted for souvenirs with great enthusiasm, but for Lewis and William the war had abruptly ceased to be a game
.

As the hot days of August wore on, the raids into London became more frequent. And although life went on much as before, Lewis woke often in the night from dreams of fire that left him heartsick with fear
.

On Saturday, the 7th of September, a few minutes before four o’clock in the afternoon, the boys were bicycling up Holmbury Hill when they heard the drone of engines overhead. Both stopped and glanced up—checking almost automatically now to see whether they were fighters or bombers—to find the sky filled with German planes. Hundreds of them—heavy, pregnant bombers surrounded by squads of smaller fighters—swept in majestic, inexorable order across the sky towards London
.

When the last plane had disappeared into the distance, they turned and cycled back to the Hall as if the winds of hell were behind them. They found everyone, even Edwina, gathered round the kitchen wireless, and there they waited for news. The reports were garbled, inconclusive, but as the hours passed, Lewis’s dread grew into a terrible sense of certainty
.

Towards evening, Cook brewed them another pot of tea, and making up some bread to go with it, she insisted that they must eat something. But that week the cat had got into the ration of butter, reducing them to putting drippings on their bread, and for Lewis what had been meant as a comfort was an unbearably sharp reminder of home. Pushing his plate aside, he ran blindly out of the kitchen
.

He sought refuge in the barn. Over the months he had come to find the sounds and scents of the animals comforting, and eventually he settled down on one of the bales of hay near Zeus’s stall and drifted into an exhausted sleep
.

He woke in darkness, disoriented, to the sound of William’s voice and a hand on his shoulder, shaking him
.

“Lewis, wake up. It’s the East End. They’ve said on the wireless. The Germans have bombed the Docks.”

“What?” He sat up, his mouth dry
.

“John’s been up Leith Hill. You can see it from there, now it’s dark.”

“See what?” Lewis said again, stupidly, his brain refusing to take in the words
.

“The fires. The East End is on fire, Lewis. London’s burning.”

“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Teresa Robbins asked as she moved to the table set up against the back wall of her office. The long trestle had been placed under the windows, and held cups, teapot, and electric kettle, as well as the bowls and tins Gemma had begun to associate with the paraphernalia of tea-tasting. “I’ll just make us a cuppa, shall I?” she added, glancing at Gemma over her shoulder.

“Just a few routine questions,” Gemma answered, nodding assent to the tea. She watched Teresa fill the kettle from a bottle of spring water; it seemed to her that the woman’s fingers trembled slightly, belying the composure of her face.

Having seen Kincaid off on his way to Cambridge at Limehouse Police Station, Gemma had arrived at Hammond’s shortly after opening time, intent on interviewing Teresa again.

Unlike Mortimer’s, the office Teresa and Annabelle had shared was large enough to accommodate two desks facing one another yet still leave a comfortable aisle down the
center of the room. Nor did it suffer from the executive pretensions that gave Reg’s office such an odd air of incongruity. The desks were of workmanlike oak and looked both comfortable and well-used—except that Annabelle’s had been cleared of everything except blotter and generic office accouterments.

Wooden tea chests stamped in either red or black ink were stacked about, and a simple bookcase held a collection of novelty teapots. The room smelled of tea and, beneath that, an elusive fragrance that Gemma couldn’t quite identify.

Seating herself in the chair nearest Teresa’s desk, Gemma studied her as she poured boiling water into a simple white pot, stirred it once, then set a small timer. “I didn’t realize it was so scientific,” Gemma said, nodding at the timer.

“What?” Teresa looked blank. “Oh, the timer.” She turned and leaned against the table while she waited for the tea to steep. “That’s one of the first things you learn, especially in tasting. If the brewing time isn’t consistent, you can’t compare the strengths of the teas. William insists on five minutes, but you can almost stand your spoon up in it. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a wimp, so I stick at four and a half.”