The Bannister Girls (31 page)

She was losing weight for no apparent reason. She had an irritating little cough that woke her in the night and hacked at her during the day. But she didn't hold with doctors, saying airily that such minor complaints were of no importance. To Fred, they were of monumental importance. It was almost as though he could see her slipping away from him, day by day. And because of his fussing, it was Harriet who had urged him to go down to Meadowcroft for a week.

‘You owe it to Clemence, Fred, and besides, you're getting on my nerves,' she said in her comfortable Yorkshire voice. ‘I'll still be here when you come back.'

‘That's a promise, is it?' Fred tried to joke, knowing it was the way she liked him to be. ‘You're not going to do anything foolish, like dying on me, are you, while I'm gone?'

Harriet gave a chuckle, suppressing the nagging cough with an effort. The shine in her eyes could have been suspiciously like tears, Fred thought.

‘Go on wi' you! You and me have got a lot of years together yet, Freddie. Unless you're getting tired of my little cottage, of course, and hanker after those big London parties you used to tell me about that you had before the war –'

His arms went round her. They met behind her back now, where he had once had difficulty in clasping his fingers together. He nuzzled his moustache against the softness of her cheek, breathing in the warm homely scent of her.

‘'Twill be a long day before I get tired of you, my bonnie Harriet,' he slipped into the Yorkshire idiom with the ease of long practise. ‘Start eating properly and put some more meat on those bones before I come back, that's all I ask.'

‘Aye. Providing Kaiser Bill allows us enough rations to make do,' she said cheerfully.

Fred snorted. ‘Rations! You need nourishment, and you know damn well that you'll get all that you need. I've seen to that. Promise me you'll eat, and stop picking at your food like a bird. It's not like you, Harriet, and I don't like to see it.'

‘Are you ordering me about now, Sir Freddie?' she teased him, touching her lips to his mouth. ‘Since when did you know me take orders from anybody?'

He gave a low rumbling laugh, despite the worry. It was one of the things he liked about her. She professed not to take orders, but he knew that for him, she would move mountains and do it cheerfully. He let her go with reluctance, knowing he must make a move on the long journey to Somerset. His factory was in order, and he must become the dutiful husband once more. If only his girls were going to be there, he thought with swift regret. It was so long since they had all been together…

Fred could hardly believe his eyes when Ellen came running out of the house when he arrived at Meadowcroft. He was stiff and tired after the long drive, but the unexpected warmth of his daughter's greeting made up for it all. Ellen
didn't normally show such affection, and he guessed rightly that she and her mother had been prickly with one another.

‘Well, this is a lovely surprise, my dear girl! Your mother didn't tell me you were going to be here.'

‘That's because she didn't know, Dad.' Ellen tucked her arm in his, a comforting feeling of things being the way they used to be creeping over her with his familiar manner. ‘You know me. Always unpredictable, and wanting to surprise everybody!'

Although Fred laughed, he was acutely aware of the tension in his daughter's arm, and a false brittleness in her voice. Why, she's not so tough as she likes to pretend, he thought with some surprise, and felt a sudden tenderness towards her because of it. It was as if he had a sudden insight into Ellen's mind at that instant, and saw how tortured it was.

‘It'll be a third like old times then,' Fred grinned. ‘At least I'll have one of my girls to banter with when your mother puts on her stuffy expression.'

Ellen grinned back, the faint shine in her eyes reminding Fred of Harriet, and endearing her still more to him. Ellen felt protected and relieved. It was Angel who had the easiest repartee with their father, but his sympathetic reaction to her presence, with no questions asked yet, was like balm to her senses.

They walked into the house together. There would be time later for someone to bring in Fred's baggage, and Fred released his daughter to give Clemence the usual peck on the cheek that was all she expected.

How different, he thought fleetingly, from the way Harriet greeted him, even after only a day, as if she was thrilled to see him, as if she truly loved and wanted him. He gave a small sigh, and prepared to play the part of Sir Frederick Bannister, husband and father.

He and Ellen depended on each other's presence that
week, without either of them admitting the fact to each other or themselves. They went for drives in the country when Clemence was too busy with her knitting circles or visiting the sick. They played chess in the evenings in front of a roaring fire while Clemence protested that such heat was terribly bad for the complexion and that Ellen was a foolish girl to risk it by sitting so close.

They exchanged news about Angel and Louise and the factory and Rose Morton and seeing Margot Lacey and how awful it was about poor Edward, and neither could touch the subjects dearest to both their hearts, Fred's anxiety over Harriet, and Ellen's heartbreak over Peter Chard. Superficially, they were as close as father and daughter could be, and if Clemence resented their closeness, she didn't show it until Fred had left for Yorkshire once more, and she and Ellen began to find each other's company intolerable.

‘I think it's time I left, Mother,' Ellen declared one evening in early February. ‘Rose will be wondering what's become of me.'

‘Well, if you think it's best, dear.' Clemence's elegant fingers didn't falter in the packing of the new batch of thick knitted socks as she spoke. Had those fingers ever caressed a man? Ellen wondered disbelievingly. Had her mother and father really enjoyed those pleasurable moments Angel had recounted so vividly? They must have done, at least three times … Ellen felt a wild desire to laugh. It could hardly be only three times in a lifetime together that her parents had been as intimate as two people could be, yet they were as coldly polite as strangers now. It was pathetic and terrible…

‘I said, which day were you thinking of leaving, Ellen?' her mother repeated. ‘You must telephone for a taxi in good time. Everything is so disorganised these days.'

Ellen forced herself to concentrate, and to get her thoughts away from the unlikely picture of her parents being ecstatic together…

‘Oh. In a few days, I should think,' she said, in confusion,
thankful that Clemence was not a mind reader. ‘That will be all right, won't it?'

‘My dear girl, of course it will. Don't think I'm pushing you out, for heaven's sake!' Clemence smiled, and they both knew that the smile held relief that this awkward situation was coming to an end.

Of all the Bannister girls, she and her mother were the least likely companions, Ellen thought sadly. It had often been said in jest at her college that one didn't have to like one's parents or relatives, did one? What was always neglected to add was that one's parents didn't have to like one, either! Though she knew that Clemence would be genuinely astonished and hurt if Ellen ever suggested such a thing.

She toyed with the idea of calling on Peter, just once, and rejected it almost as quickly. What would be the point? He would be glad to be rid of such a troublesome young woman, whom he undoubtedly saw as merely dabbling in campaigning and book-keeping, and could be as flighty as any village girl in the pursuit of pleasure.

He probably thought Ellen worse, chasing every excitement and new experience that life offered, in the way that bored young middle class girls did. She could have wept with the frustration of it all, but she couldn't risk that cold censorious look from him again.

Nor could she go back to Rose Morton's house. She had left it for good this time. And if she had hated the presence of the new lover in the house, then how much more would she hate it now, with all the misery of her own thwarted feelings held so tightly in check?

She simply didn't know where she would go, as she boarded the train at Temple Meads station for London. She was jostled on all sides by women saying good-bye to the men they were sending away. Older women with heads held high as they fought back the tears and sent their sons to France; openly weeping young wives who clung to pink-faced youths in brand new uniforms who looked more fit
for the schoolroom than for a war.

There was hardly a seat to be found on the train, but Ellen preferred to stand in the corridor where there was more air than in the staleness of the compartment. She was stifled by her own inadequacy, when she had once thought herself so strong and so capable; by the appalling waste of these boys all around her singing the war-provoked songs of hope; by suddenly realising she was not a part of it all. She had worked doggedly beside Rose in the munitions factory, but it was still not enough, not enough…

The thunder of the wheels on the track as the train rocked and hurtled through the night seemed to drum the words into her brain. Ellen had not given enough…

Louise … well, surely Louise had given enough to the war. Whether she loved him or not, Stanley had been her husband, and he had been her sacrifice.

Angel … Angel was the brave one, the unexpectedly brave one, doing things that no young girl could be expected to do, seeing sights that would make brave men flinch. Ellen was fiercely proud of Angel, and had never realised it until that moment.

She dismounted from the train at Paddington station, still unsure where she was going. A small hotel for the night, perhaps, and then she would decide whether to go up to their old Hampstead house and stay there for a while. What did it matter if her parents had decamped? They needn't know of her plans.

Or she could take the long journey to Scotland and stay with Louise for a while. She was sure her sister would be pleased to see someone from home. She felt as disorientated as when she had left Rose's house to go to Meadowcroft, weary with the sheer effort of trying to think.

She left the station and walked into the nearest hotel. Once in her room, she undressed and almost crawled into bed, pushing aside everything but the immediate need for sleep, and trying not to mind that everyone
else seemed to have a purpose in life except herself.

Angel's request to be sent to the hospital at the Abbey of St Helene was still not granted. It was blisteringly unfair. She could be of such help in translating … no matter how much she badgered Sister Yard, she was always met with the same crisp response.

‘You're too useful here, Bannister. I've promised that you'll be released just as soon as it's possible, but I don't need to tell you we need every hand we've got, and I know you're not the type to desert a sinking ship.'

It was emotional blackmail, Angel raged, but there wasn't a thing she could do about it. She was given more and more ambulance duties now, and short of absconding in a hospital vehicle, she was as tied to Sister Yard's commands as if the two of them were Siamese twins. She had tried getting a message to the Abbey hospital, but there had been no reply, and the anxiety over Jacques' safety was as gnawing as ever.

Sister Yard was right, of course. She would never desert. Not when so many needed her and all the other willing helpers at Piersville. But she longed for news of Jacques, and the hope that had flared when the dying soldier told her of the unknown artist, was beginning to dwindle. She tried to keep the hope alive, but it was so very hard when she was surrounded by death and despair…

‘Somebody's asking for you, Bannister,' one of the other V.A.D.s called out to her when she was snatching a quick cup of tea. ‘Sister says you can just take a minute. It's a woman, by the way.'

Angel put her cup down with shaking hands. It took so little for the hope to surge again, only to crumble … she went into the hospital corridor, brushing her hand across her eyes. She was solid, she reminded herself. Sister Yard had told her so repeatedly. She wouldn't break…

‘Ellen!' she croaked, staring in disbelief at the strangely uncertain figure of her sister, standing so incongruously in
her smart coat and hat, her expensive travelling bag at her feet, when everyone else around them was dishevelled and unkempt from too many hours doing too many unpleasant tasks.

‘Hello, darling,' Ellen's voice was high-pitched, as if she too were seeing all these things in an instant. ‘Sorry to burst in on you, old thing, but I couldn't think what else to do. Do you suppose your person in charge could give me a job, typing up reports or that sort of thing? I wouldn't be any trouble –'

Her voice suddenly broke, and the strain of making the decision, and travelling nonstop from London very early that morning, was making her mouth lose control of itself. It hardly mattered, though, because the next minute she was being hugged and kissed, and it was so good, so bloody marvellously good, to know that somebody was glad to see her, anyway.

Tears of joy overcame both girls as they hugged each other. Old aggressions were forgotten as the sweet familiarity of family ties drew them together. Angel mopped her eyes and gave a shaky laugh.

‘I still can't believe that you're here, Ellen! I thought you'd be firmly settled on Peter Chard's farm by now, and have hayseeds growing out of your ears!'

Ellen's smile was tight.

‘They always called me unpredictable, didn't they, darling?' she said with forced gaiety.

Out of the corner of her eye, Angel saw Sister Yard coming towards them.

‘Oh, I'm dying to talk! But I'm due back on the ward, and Sister doesn't spare us the time for social chit-chat. Did you really mean it about working here, Ellen?'

‘Of course I did! I didn't come all this way to stand about in a draughty corridor and envy the way you can even look beautiful when you're dressed for business, sister dear.'