The September Girls (55 page)

‘Oh!’ Sybil threw down the pen and buried her head in her hands. Why did everything have to go wrong? How much better it would have been for everyone had it been her, not Jonathan, who had drowned!

July, 1942

The stairs to the attic were hidden behind a door that Fielding had always taken to be a cupboard. She opened it one day by mistake when looking for clean sheets and discovered wooden steps, steep and narrow, leading up to an area of total blackness.

‘Let’s explore,’ she urged Cara when she went downstairs, eyes glowing with excitement. ‘I didn’t know the house had an attic. There might be all sorts of interesting things up there.’

‘I looked once and there’s nothing but old luggage and chests and cardboard boxes,’ Cara told her.

‘Yes, but what’s
in
them, that’s what I’d like to know. Oh, come on, the kids are asleep and you’ll hear if they wake up.’

‘Oh, all right, if you must.’ Cara rolled her eyes with pretend impatience.

‘I couldn’t see a switch for the light, so we’ll need the torch.’

‘We can’t take the torch. The batteries have run out and Nancy hasn’t been able to buy more for love nor money.’ Like so many things, batteries were in extremely short supply. ‘We’ll take a candle - they’re hard to get, too, but I think we’ve got a few left.’

The candleholder was found, the candle lit and they cautiously climbed the narrow stairs. ‘I feel like Wee Willie Winkie.’ Cara giggled. ‘There must be a draught up here,’ she remarked when she reached the top and the flame began to flicker madly. ‘Are you all right, Fielding?’

‘I’m fine.’ Fielding hated being reminded that she only had one arm and might find things more difficult than if she still had two.

The candle was placed on the floor, the flame settled, and began to burn quite steadily, with only the occasional flicker.

‘It’s creepy up here.’ Cara shivered. ‘And it smells dead musty.’ The loft felt cool, although the weather was hot and humid, threatening a storm to come, and the light wasn’t enough to reach the corners of the room that was so large it must have covered the length and breadth of the house. However, it was possible to see the dozens of cobwebs hanging from the rafters and the thick layer of dust that covered everything. The roof peaked like a church and Cara’s voice echoed eerily, the words seeming to hang in the air long after she’d finished speaking. ‘What’s that?’ she cried when there was a faint rustling sound. ‘I hope it’s not rats.’

‘It’s birds in the eaves,’ Fielding said confidently, although she had no idea what the sound had been.

‘What if we find a body in one of the chests?’

‘It won’t be a body by now, it’ll be a skeleton.’

Cara snorted. ‘That makes me feel much better. What shall we open first?’

‘This chest.’ Fielding kicked a black lacquered chest with a badly tarnished brass clasp. She pressed it a few times and the clasp sprang open. ‘I thought it might need oiling,’ she said, lifting the lid. ‘Phew!’ They both stepped back, overwhelmed by the powerful smell of mothballs.

‘It must be clothes.’ Cara gingerly peeled away several sheets of yellow tissue paper and lifted out a long, ice-blue velvet dress with thick, ivory lace panels from the shoulders to the hem and long, tight sleeves with lace cuffs. ‘It’s lovely!’ she breathed. ‘Is it Edwardian?’

‘I wouldn’t know. Let’s see what else there is. I wonder who this stuff belonged to?’

‘Eleanor’s mother, I expect. It might even be Victorian.’

The next outfit was a dark-green velvet costume trimmed with white fur around the jacket and the hem of the long flared skirt. Something fell to the floor and Fielding picked it up. It was a little white fur muff. ‘Ermine,’ she announced, ‘to match the costume. See, I told you we might find some interesting things.’

Cara lifted a pink taffeta dress lavishly decorated with bunches of darker pink satin roses. Layers of tissue paper floated to the floor. ‘This looks like a ball gown.’ She held it against her. ‘Imagine going to a dance dressed like this!’

The chest was emptied of more beautiful clothes that looked as new as the day they were bought, if very badly creased and stinking of camphor.

‘Nancy can cut these down and make us some dead fashionable outfits,’ Fielding said gleefully.

‘That would be a shame. Imagine cutting up something like this!’ Cara pointed to the last item she’d found, an ankle-length black serge coat with a satin collar and cuffs and giant satin buttons down the front.

‘All that needs is the hem taking up and it would fit you perfectly,’ Fielding pointed out, smiling at the sudden look of interest on her friend’s face at the idea of a new coat. ‘This stuff is no use as it is. Now that clothes are rationed, we may as well use it.’ Not only were they rationed, they were called ‘Utility’ and made out of the minimum amount of material. The styles were very uninspiring.

‘I should ask Eleanor first if she wants them. After all, they belonged to her mother. As for Nancy, hasn’t she already got enough to do without making us clothes?’ Nancy had not long left for a meeting of the Friends of Russia Society.

‘Eleanor won’t want the whole lot.’ Fielding grinned. ‘
She
can make us some clothes. She’s a better dressmaker than Nancy.’

‘Fielding!’ Cara laughed. ‘You are a horrible, opportunist bitch. Look. I’d better go and feed Sean.’

‘Can I stay and see what else there is?’

‘Of course. After he’s been fed, I’m taking him and Kitty round to Mam’s. She’s just finished knitting Kitty a cardigan. I don’t know when Nancy will be back and our Fergus is coming to see us on his way home from work, but I should be here by then.’ She gave her a worried look. ‘Will you be all right on your own?’

‘Yes,’ Fielding snapped. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘There’s no need to get your knickers in a twist.’ Cara began to climb down the ladder. ‘Tara for now.’

Fielding didn’t answer. You’d think she was an invalid or something, the way everyone watched out for her, wanted to help cut up her food and that sort of thing, when she could manage perfectly well on her own. Well, almost. Very occasionally, a potato or a slice of meat would go shooting across the table, but it didn’t happen often these days.

She opened a round cardboard box and found it full of fantastic hats: huge, wavy affairs decorated with feathers, flowers and magnificent bows. They’d be perfect for
Pygmalion
- she’d played Eliza Doolittle years ago when she’d belonged to a repertory company.

The next box she looked in contained books that she didn’t bother with: books were OK, but not nearly as fascinating as clothes. She opened a suitcase and stared at the contents, aghast. They looked like instruments of torture, but they were corsets, a horrible fleshy pink colour, all heavily boned with yards of laces.

Cara shouted, ‘I’m off now.’

‘See you later,’ she shouted back.

The front door slammed at the very same moment as the candle went out and the attic was plunged into darkness so complete that she couldn’t see a single thing. ‘Cara!’ she screamed. ‘
Cara
!’ As expected, there was no answer. Cara had gone.

Maybe the candle was still lit and she’d gone blind. Could you go blind within the space of a single second? It had only taken that long to lose an arm. She closed her eyes and opened them again, but still couldn’t see a thing. Gradually, though, objects began to take shape, only dimly: the trunks, the boxes, an ugly standard lamp, a deer’s head with enormous antlers and all the other detritus of dead people’s lives that had been stored in the attic. She could see a faint area of light where the stairs must be. She could escape!

Fielding stood and screamed again when a cobweb curled around her face and she frantically clawed it away as she stumbled towards the stairs. She sat on the edge of the opening, her feet on the steps, then realized she couldn’t climb down that way, she’d have to go backwards. But when she tried to turn around it was impossible: she needed another arm to steady herself and it didn’t help that she was shaking so badly. She’d just have to wait until Cara came back and rescued her, although she’d pretend she’d been on the point of coming down and say casually, ‘Give us a hand,’ as anyone might do even if they had two arms.

There was a strange flash of light down below, as if someone had switched on a light and immediately switched it off again. Seconds later, thunder rumbled in the distance and Fielding froze. The flash had been lightning and the storm that had been threatening all day had started. She’d forgotten all about it. It was the only thing that she was terrified of: thunder. Bombs were one thing, she knew where they came from, but thunder was a mysterious, supernatural freak of nature that she would never understand.

There was another flash, more rumbling, closer this time and louder, and she whimpered in fear. More flashes, but this time the thunder was like the crack of a giant whip, as if the earth was being punished for some monstrous crime. Then the heavens opened and rain began to fall, beating against the roof of the loft so hard that she expected the slates to break open and it to come pouring in.

She gritted her teeth and tried to think of something else, of those wonderful months in Malta she’d spent with Cara, Mac and Kit. It had been the best time of her life, better even than starring in a show. She recalled the night in Gozo when she’d fallen in love with Mac and he with her. He’d said he could never bring himself to leave his wife and kids, but it hadn’t bothered them. All that mattered was
now
and the fact their affair wouldn’t last for ever had made it even more exhilarating. She would never forget the thrill of making love in all sorts of strange places - dangerous places, where they could have easily been discovered, like the backs of lorries, behind Marzipan Hall, or in the workshop after it had closed for the night. Cara hadn’t known. She was such an innocent, Fielding thought fondly. After Gozo, she and Kit hadn’t made love again. Apparently, they required a proper room with a proper bed, unlike her and Mac who were prepared to do it anywhere. Now Mac was just a memory, occupying only a tiny portion of her life.

What she would have done if Cara hadn’t found her in that flat in Soho, she had no idea: killed herself probably. She’d actually been toying with the idea of suicide for weeks - a bottle of aspirin followed by a bottle of gin would have done it - but then Cara had appeared and brought her back here, to Nancy and all sorts of other people who seemed to love her, making her feel as if she belonged to a proper family, something she hadn’t experienced since her mother died.

None of these people guessed how she felt inside, how much she hurt, how devastated she was about losing her arm, being incomplete, only half a woman, who would never sing or act again. She hid her feelings behind a shield of cynicism, making jokes, pretending to be tough. ‘You’re so brave,’ Eleanor kept telling her. ‘I do admire you.’

The thunder was getting even louder, making the house shake and, in the deathly silence that followed, she heard a sound behind her. She turned quickly and saw two eyes staring directly at her. Her heart threatened to leave her body and she screamed again and couldn’t stop screaming until it came to her that the eyes belonged to the deer that had probably been dead for a hundred years. What the sound was, she had no idea - perhaps there really were birds in the eaves and they were sheltering from the rain. She prayed it wasn’t rats.

‘Cara,’ she groaned. ‘Come home.’ But Cara wasn’t likely to come until the storm finished, and when Nancy came in, it wouldn’t enter her head that anyone was in the loft and she wouldn’t hear the loudest of screams from the kitchen.

She began to cry wretchedly when there was another thunderclap that threatened to tear the sky apart. It died away and, in the silence that followed, a man’s voice said, ‘Hello, is someone up there?’ A dark form appeared at the bottom of the stairs and she uttered a little frightened moan.

‘Is that you, Juliette?’

‘Yes, Fergus,’ she whispered. Fergus Caffrey was the only person who called her by her first name. She’d started calling Caffrey ‘Cara’, the same as everyone else did, but ‘Fielding’ seemed to have stuck, not that she minded.

He climbed towards her, she almost fell into his arms and he carried her down as easily and tenderly as if she’d been a baby. She clung to him, sobbing quietly into his shoulder, while he carried her down more stairs and into the kitchen, where he sat down and she stayed on his knee, unwilling to be let go.

‘Have you been up there during the storm?’ he asked gently.

She nodded and his hand came up and stroked her hair and she could feel his thumb pressing against her cheek. She turned her face towards his and all of a sudden they were kissing and it felt really good, making her head swim. The events of the afternoon: being stranded in the loft, the thunderstorm, the staring eyes, might never have happened.

The kiss ended, as kisses do, and he said, ‘Why are we doing this?’ and she said, ‘I don’t know,’ and they began to kiss again. There was another pause and he said in an awed voice, ‘I think I love you, Juliette,’ and she told him it was quite possible that she loved him. ‘But you have so many girlfriends, I didn’t think you’d noticed my existence.’

‘I noticed all right.’ He rubbed his cheek against hers. ‘I liked you the minute I set eyes on you, but you never showed the slightest interest in me.’

‘It seemed a waste of time in view of the girlfriends.’

They continued to kiss, the girl without an arm and the young man with a limp, who’d come through a cruel, merciless war and found each other.

 

The pink material sped smoothly under the foot of the sewing machine. Cara had tried on the dress inside out and Eleanor had pinned tucks in the bodice so it would fit her slim figure perfectly. The smell of mothballs had almost gone and it would make a perfect bridesmaid’s dress. It was a pity her mother would never know that her lovely clothes were being remodelled for a wartime wedding. The memory of her mother was only vague in her mind - she couldn’t even recall her passing away. Perhaps it was because Nancy had immediately taken her place and she’d always been so close to her father.