The Bannister Girls (12 page)

‘Angel,
darling
, whatever's been happening to you?'

Margot Lacey's voice screamed through the telephone wires, so that Angel had to hold the instrument a few inches away from her ears to avoid being deafened.

‘Margot, how wonderful to hear your voice!'

‘I tried telephoning you
heaps
of times, but there was never any reply, and so I decided you must have gone up north with your father, or something equally
ghastly
. Then I gave you one last chance, and your old retainer fellow answered, and said you'd all gone down to the country for Lord knows how long. Darling, is it simply
awful
?'

She paused for breath, and Angel laughed at the metallic sound of Margot's voice. Right now, it was like a breath of fresh air blowing through the house. And the assumption that anywhere outside London was
ghastly
was so typically Margot.

‘Not awful, just pretty boring! Oh, except that we had a murder in the village a couple of weeks ago –'

‘A
murder
?' Margot squealed. ‘But how frightful! And they say nothing ever happens in sleepy old Somerset. Weren't you all simply terrified?'

Angel considered this.

‘Not really. More sad than anything else, because the man who was killed was a perfectly nice old German shopkeeper –'

‘
Ah
!' Margot's tone said everything. ‘And he was quietly
disposed of afterwards, I'll bet, and no witnesses ever found. Does that sound about right?'

‘Exactly,' Angel said bitterly. ‘Isn't it all beastly?'

‘Absolute hell,' Margot said with the frankness that had made her tutors despair of her. ‘But when am I going to see you, Angel? Can you get up to town, or do you insist that I come down there? You know that I go faint at the thought of cow muck and gumboots, but I'm dying to know what you've been doing since the night I caught that rotten chill and your visit had to be cut short. I was so sorry about all that, darling, and I did mean to contact you long before this, honestly.'

Angel listened to her prattling, hardly registering the words. Swift nostalgia for that night that had begun so badly, and ended so stunningly, surrounded her like a soft blanket. She could almost taste Jacques' mouth on hers. She could feel the strength of his arms around her. She knew at last the mysteries of love. She was warm and safe and alive … she started as she heard Margot's insistent voice.

‘Are you still there, Angel? Have we been cut off?'

‘No. I'm sorry. I was just thinking.' Angel tried to drag her thoughts back to the present from the hazy warmth of remembering. ‘Tell me what it's like in London now.'

She could almost see Margot shrugging her slim shoulders, and running her hand through her mass of dark hair in unconcern.

‘Not so bad. The Jerries send their beastly Zeppelins to frighten us most nights, and we have to keep our doors and windows closed to stop their pilots seeing any lights. A waste of time if you ask me. The skies are criss-crossed with so many searchlights, they light up London far more than any gaslights would. Still, you can't argue with the government.'

Her tone said that she would certainly do so if she got the chance. Angel found herself laughing again.

‘Oh, Margot, it is good to hear you. I've missed you!'

‘Well then? Come up to town if the parents will let you,
and stay for a night or two. It will help relieve the dreary arguments Mother and I keep having.'

‘I didn't think you and your mother ever argued.' Angel was somehow cheered to think that other families had their problems too.

‘We do now. Edward came home from his boarding school absolutely keyed up with this enlisting nonsense, and as you can imagine, Mother went berserk.'

‘
What
? But he's only fifteen, isn't he?' She remembered Margot's pimply brother as being red-faced and stammering whenever she came into the room.

‘Sixteeen now, and grown so huge in the last six months that he'd easily pass for older, and Mother thinks he'll lie about his age and be in France before we know it. Edward's really grown up, Angel. He has a mind of his own now, and I have more than a sneaking admiration for him, but I can see Mother's point of view too – well, just about,' she added obstinately. ‘Anyway, what do you say to coming for a visit?'

Angel spoke positively. ‘It would be better if you came here. We're all getting on each other's nerves, as a matter of fact. Mother wants to get me involved in her Good Works, and Louise is a pompous ass, and Ellen's miserable because her friend who was staying here has gone back to London and she doesn't know what to do with herself.'

‘Good Lord. It does sound as if you need someone to cheer you up! All right. I'll try and get down in a week or so if my mother hasn't thrown a fit over Edward by then. She always thinks of you as a calming influence on me, anyway. I'll find out the times of the trains, and perhaps someone can meet me at Bristol.'

Angel smiled into the receiver.

‘I'll arrange that as soon as you confirm the date and time. It will be marvellous to see you. We've got such a lot to talk about.'

She hung up the receiver. Margot didn't know that Angel
could now drive a car. She would surprise her by turning up at Temple Meads station herself. In fact, she thought guiltily, she was quite capable now of driving her mother there for her returning heroes rotas. The tea and biscuits once provided were now tea and a cigarette, which the soldiers appreciated far more, Clemence said a mite primly.

Angel sought out her mother at once to make the suggestion, and also to ask if Margot could come for a visit. She had already put the cart before the horse, but she didn't anticipate any objections.

‘I'm not sure that I approve,' Clemence said, to Angel's intense surprise. ‘I haven't forgotten the furore after the last time you and Margot were supposed to be together, though to be fair, I presume none of your indiscretion was planned, and that Margot knew nothing of it.'

‘She still doesn't,' Angel said quickly, her face fiery.

‘Then she may come, of course,' Clemence said graciously. ‘I shall look forward to seeing her again, and some fresh company may revive Ellen a bit.'

Angel hesitated, and then spoke her mind.

‘I think she's lonely, Mother. You and Louise are so self-contained, somehow, and I have my driving practice, but now that Rose has gone, Ellen seems to have no purpose in her life.'

Clemence was decisive. ‘Nonsense. A young woman with no purpose in her life? She has everything to look forward to, not like some of the poor boys coming home crippled from the Front. Perhaps you would drive me to the railway station today, and see for yourself, Angel. Ellen could come too. Where is she, by the way? I haven't seen her for hours.'

‘Neither have I,' Angel said noncommittally. But from the few hints Ellen had dropped recently, she had a strong suspicion as to her sister's whereabouts, and if her mother even guessed, she would be scandalised.

*

The small group of people on the Downs overlooking the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol crowded together a little more closely, as if to present a solid front to the angry hecklers and spectators in their audience. Two of the group held placards on which were painted the words, Justice For All.

One of these two was Ellen Bannister. Her nearest companion was a man in his late twenties, with a shock of unruly dark hair above the collar of his jacket, and a noticeable limp when he walked.

‘It's time we got out of here,' he muttered to Ellen, as the crowd that had gathered around them looked more and more menacing. It was their third different venue in a week, and they had met with the same hostile response each time.

‘Not yet, Peter,' Ellen pleaded. ‘Let's have one more try to make them see reason.'

‘All right. But only a few more minutes.'

He conceded as he usually did, because he thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Strong and fearless and beautiful. Not in a simpering, silly Way like some of the harshly made-up film stars at the bioscope show, but in a way that made him feel he could walk shoulder to shoulder with Ellen Bannister in any emergency, and she would never let him down. She was a woman who could be a true partner to a man with none of the love nonsense intruding. Unless he wanted it to, of course.

‘You all know why we're here,' he shouted to the angry onlookers, and suddenly ducked as a rotten egg was aimed his way. It missed his jacket, but smeared over the placard.

‘We know, all right, Jerry lover!' One and another in the crowd began to scream and jeer. ‘Tain't only them who should be put in prison. ‘Tis all Jerry lovers as well. You're as disgraceful to your country as they conchie bastards!'

‘Just listen to us,
please
!' Peter and the others tried to
shout above the roar of approval. ‘All we're saying is that the Germans who have lived here most of their lives should be allowed to remain peaceably, in separate communities, perhaps –'

‘So that they can start up a private war right here in England, I s'pose –'

‘There's no reason to kill a man just because he's of a different race to our own!' Ellen shouted back, tears of frustration very near. Why wouldn't they understand?

‘Have any of you seen how an ordinary shopkeeper can be victimised in a small village where he was always loved and respected? Have any of you seen how he can be killed in cold blood, and then realise there's not
one witness
? No
killers
? We're all killers, while we allow these things to happen. These are
people
, the same as us –'

‘They ain't the same as us. They're Jerries, and they're killing our men in the trenches, so we've every right to kill them in return! They know the risks they take. They should go back where they belong. We don't want them here!'

Other missiles were hurled towards the group of pacifists. Stones, rotten fruit, sticks … one of them struck Ellen on the side of the face, causing the blood to spurt. She gave a little cry, and rubbed furiously at the graze.

The ultimate insult came when a woman onlooker dragged a handful of white feathers from her shopping bag and threw them into the faces of the men. Sensing even more trouble if they stayed, the group began edging away from the Downs to where an old van stood by the side of the road.

‘Come on, Ellen. We're doing no good here,' they yelled back at her as she lingered. Peter grabbed her hand and bundled her into the van in front of him.

But not before a woman in a small car on her way through the city from her charity organisation headquarters had taken in the scene with horrified and disbelieving eyes.

Once the group was safely inside the van, the driver moved
away quickly, and Ellen leaned back, her small breasts heaving with fury.

‘Are we so wrong?' She almost wept with the stinging pain in her cheek now that she was out of the cooler air. ‘We're acting in the name of common humanity, for God's sake!'

The others muttered and whispered uneasily among themselves. In the beginning, it had seemed a noble enough effort to campaign for the rights of the German immigrants, and the smart city girl had encouraged them with an inspired fervour. But it was clearly time to come to a decision.

At Meadowcroft late that afternoon, Clemence and Angel sat exhaustedly together over a very welcome pot of tea. Angel was more unnerved than at any time in her life before. She had gone to Temple Meads station with her mother, not really knowing what to expect, but vaguely assuming that everything would be clean and tidy and clinical; sweet-faced nurses helping the wounded into the waiting ambulances; calming doctors on hand to give relief to those in any real pain.

The reality was a nightmare. The casualty train had been packed. One end of it was for the slightly wounded and the walking cases; the middle was for the more serious; the rear carriages for the hopeless, for whom there was no hurry. It was neither the railway's nor the army's fault that the men were herded inside like cattle. They simply couldn't cope with the sheer numbers of returning wounded, and this was only one station among many.

Temple Meads railway station was the setting-down point for the southwest, for the city and country hospitals and the outlying convalescent homes, and for those fortunate ones returning to their own homes on compassionate leave, those who were still able to walk and talk and see…

With her mother and the other helpers with their trolleys and tea urns and vast quantities of cigarettes, Angel waited quietly, but with nerves suddenly on edge as the train slowly
approached the platform, hissing steam and enveloping all those who waited in its damp hazy cloud.

One moment the platform was half empty save for the stalwart ladies and the ambulance people. The next, it surged with noise and swarmed with nurses and pathetic figures clad in blood-stained khaki. Some of them seemed barely human. Some had their entire faces covered in bandages, with not even slits in the cloth for the eyes to see as they were led gently away from the train like children.

Others were pushed along the platform in wheelchairs, with nothing beneath the seat of the chair where their legs had been torn or shot away in battle. Some had armless jacket sleeves hanging pathetically by their sides, and the gaunt, haunted eyes of shell-shock. Others had weeping sores on their faces or showing through their torn uniforms, the result of being too long without proper medical attention.

There was an endless trail of stretchers being carried along the platform from the rear carriages. The sweet sickly smell of gangrene quickly permeated the air and the overall stench was enough to make Angel want to gag. She suppressed the feeling with a huge effort.

Angel lost count of the grasping hands that reached out for hers for a moment of comfort. She thought that her head must surely throb for days with the sounds of groaning, the muted sobs and the occasional scream that was all the more terrible because it was wrenched from a man's throat.