Winter Roses (24 page)

‘It was actually George who arranged it for me.’

‘How on earth did he manage that?’

‘He has all sorts of chums now in London through his cartoons. Funny, isn’t it – all the fuss that Father made about them, and now he’s almost as famous as Bairnsfather. Anyway, he met Lena Ashwell, who told him all about her problems now the men from the Motor Transport Section were necessary for front-line work, and went to see Sir John, who shunted him to the right person at the War Office. He suggested they use some of the newly trained WAACs. It may mean driving army transport wagons, and
I’ll have to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road, but won’t it be fun?’

‘Yes,’ Caroline agreed instantly. There would be time enough for Phoebe to discover the other side of the war. The famous actress Lena Ashwell had been a suffragette and just like Aunt Tilly, when war came, she put suffrage to one side to concentrate on what she could do for the troops.

Phoebe laughed. ‘Poor Father. Not only George, but now here’s me and Isabel linked with the entertainment business.’

‘Not so poor Father. I would think he’ll be pleased. After all, he wanted to go on the stage himself, but followed the Church instead.’

‘I never knew that,’ Phoebe exclaimed. ‘How strange, yet I suppose, judging by his sermons, he’d have been a good actor.’

‘A touch of the Henry Irvings about him, isn’t there?’

‘More than that of Dan Leno, I agree.’

‘Unfair. Think of the Family Coach at Christmas.’

Unfortunately, Caroline thought about it herself – and was promptly reminded of Yves. Phoebe too, for she asked: ‘What’s happened to that nice Belgian officer who brought stars to your eyes at Christmas, Caroline?’

Caroline stared down at the cocoa dregs. ‘He brought too many. I haven’t seen him since, but for one brief visit.’

‘That’s very odd. Was he posted away?’

Caroline decided she could not talk about it. Instead, she turned the attack. ‘Do you realise, Phoebe, this is the first straight talk we’ve had in years?’

‘That’s because for the first time you’re not speaking to me as a little sister. Because I’m wearing a uniform, you realise I’m grown up now and age doesn’t matter any longer.’

‘Provided you still show me some respect,’ Caroline agreed. ‘Will you like being overseas, do you think?’

Her sister looked surprised. ‘Yes. You know how I’ve always wanted to get away. That’s why I was so upset when war came and I couldn’t go to school in Paris. It wasn’t the school I cared about; I just wanted to get away from Ashden.’

‘But why? Don’t you like the village?’ Caroline was astounded. How could any of them not have deep feelings for it?

Phoebe considered. ‘It was the Rectory I wanted to leave. I felt like an ugly duckling, and I knew I’d always feel like that unless I got away. And now at last I have.’

‘You look like the loveliest ugly duckling I’ve ever seen,’ Caroline joked, despite her concern. How could you grow up with someone and have so little idea of what they were feeling? Phoebe had always been a problem, but how often had she stopped to ask herself why?

‘You were always jolly nice to me, Caroline, but from the lofty height of Elder Sister. I couldn’t talk to George, Felicia scared me and Isabel – well, Isabel is Isabel.’

‘Not any more. She’s changing.’

‘Because of that business with Reggie?’

‘You knew about that?’ Caroline was horrified. She had thought it buried, a secret between herself and Isabel.

‘I had a lot of time to see what was going on. You
wouldn’t have been happy with him, Caroline – Isabel or no Isabel, Lady Hunney or no Lady Hunney.’

‘Suppose I’d said that about Harry?’

Phoebe shot a look at her. ‘He and I didn’t have time to find that out.’

‘And you were very young.’

‘I was eighteen. That was another reason I needed to get away. There was Isabel married to Rich Robert, there was you engaged to Rally-Round-the-Flag Reggie, Felicia firmly wedded in heart to Daniel – and my love didn’t seem like any of yours. Meeting Harry was like –’ she sought for words ‘– coming home out of a heavy storm on a dark night. I’d been battling to get out of the storm for years. I suppose that’s why I teased Christopher Denis so much. I feel rather sorry about that now.’

‘You went very quiet about that time,’ Caroline remembered.

‘They don’t tell you at home or in books about the bad side of what’s between men and women. I had a scare,’ she said jerkily.

‘You’d better tell me,’ Caroline said quietly.

‘Len Thorn—’

‘
What?
Phoebe, he didn’t—’

‘No, but nearly. I got away. But a lot of it was my fault. It plunged me into that storm though.’

‘But it’s over since you met Harry.’

‘Almost. He showed me what love really was.’

‘There’s a path between Harry and the dark storm. You’ll find it, Phoebe.’

‘If I do, it’s thanks to Harry. I’ll never forget him. Never.
War is so unfair. Like,’ she gave Caroline a mischievous look, ‘you and your captain.’

Caroline laughed at having the tables turned. ‘He’s gone and I doubt if I’ll see him again.’

‘What would Father have said if you had married a Roman Catholic – he is, isn’t he? – and went to live in Belgium?’

‘He’d say, “At last I’ve got rid of you.”’

‘You’re not playing fair, Caroline. I told you what I felt about Harry – you owe it to me to be honest too, or I’ll accuse you of elder sisterdom.’

Caroline was caught. She had to talk about it. ‘It’s probably only wounded vanity. It changed so suddenly. Up to Christmas, Yves was just there, I looked forward to seeing him but I didn’t ask myself why; somehow I just accepted he was part of me. Does that sound stupid?’

‘No. I’m envious. I didn’t have long enough with Harry to do that.’

‘Then at Christmas, we kissed and everything changed. He seemed – I seemed – to be a different person. He came to the Rectory on the day after Boxing Day, and it was as if we shared some wonderful secret; he didn’t even kiss me again, only once as he left. I thought this was a brave new world I’d glimpsed. If it was, Mr Wells’ time machine dumped me firmly back into 1917. I haven’t seen Yves since he called to say goodbye at the office a few days later. I feel as if half of me has been ripped away and left me limping along with half a life. Stupid, I know. I have work, I have my darling family. Perhaps I was grasping at straws after Reggie’s death, and someday I’ll meet someone else far more suitable.’

‘That’s what I tell myself too. It doesn’t help one bit, does it?’

‘No,’ Caroline agreed gratefully.

‘To God with heart and cheerful voice …’ Margaret’s cheerful voice was in fine fettle this morning, even though Myrtle was using the new Komo Handy Mop (‘dust laughs at ordinary brooms’) like a scrubbing brush. He deserved a spring hymn in May, even though everybody in the pea pod was forgetting they were all under the same pod roof. Mrs Lilley was spending more and more time on her job again, not because she wanted to but because she had to, so the government said. Margaret was beginning to see herself as the hub of the Rectory, holding the whole wheel together and making it turn, and she was proud of it.
And
she was doing a war job in Tunbridge Wells too. Her talks were popular and she had to organise more classes. The telephone was always ringing nowadays, and all too often it was for her. The ladies always needed to know about something or other. The Rector had joked about paying for another line once the war was over.

Meanwhile, His Majesty had pointed out by royal proclamation that the way to achieve this was to save bread. They had meatless days, potatoless days, now breadless days. No flour to be used in pastry, and every household to reduce their consumption of bread by at least one quarter.

Miss Caroline had a face as long as a fiddle when she came home last week. Missing Miss Phoebe probably. Margaret had gone so far as to ask her what was wrong,
to which she had announced gloomily that she felt like the waste crust on that new propaganda poster, the bit left over.

‘I am a slice of bread,’ she intoned dismally. ‘I measure three inches by two and a half and my thickness is half an inch. Alas, I am wasted every day.’

Bread or no bread, spring weather was here, and life was looking brighter at last. Fred must be all right or she’d have heard. The Tommies were on the march in France; one more push, so Percy said, and those Germans would be running back home with their tails between their legs. There was hope in the air.

It was Friday 25th May. In Folkestone, Caroline read her mother’s latest letter three times. Oh, to be in Ashden now that spring was here. There the blackbird would be singing in the tree outside her window, and daffodils would have given way to tulips, forget-me-nots and bluebells. Everyone said the war was as good as over, now the Americans were in it, and she hadn’t had a spot or toothache for a month. She put on the spring hat she’d treated herself to, and set off to work.

Sun was a marvellous thing, even though her mother always tut-tutted, warning her about its dangers. Caroline never took the advice seriously, although looking at her mother’s still perfect complexion, perhaps she should. In a belated attack of conscience, she pulled the brim of the new hat a little further over her forehead.

As she emerged onto the front to turn towards the office, a whiff of the sea caught her nostrils. Since the Leas was unusually free of tramping columns of khaki, it was easy to imagine that old-fashioned bathing machines still lined the town beach, one end of which was allotted to gentlemen, the other to lady bathers; and that beyond that, safe from disapproving eyes, white tents adorned another beach on which both male and female daringly consorted in decorous costumes. If she were to stroll up to the Metropole, would Madame de Pompadour, as Caroline called the doyenne of
Folkestone society, be presiding over tea and delicate petits fours, or would the familiar sea of khaki meet her eyes?

In fact Caroline was now part of the khaki brigade. The government had decided that since they had graciously allowed women into the uniformed services, all women working for them should be in uniform. Caroline loathed khaki since khaki loathed her, but there was a certain pleasure in not only feeling but looking like part of the war effort. Nobody seemed sure, but perhaps she was even a WAAC herself. She had certainly received a visit from administrative staff of the new corps, detailed to hand out uniforms to all fry, grander and lesser. She was the proud possessor of khaki skirt, brown boots, khaki jacket, wide-brimmed hat. The rest of the paraphernalia, like thick knickers, she was expected to provide herself, or so Phoebe had told her with an earnest and straight face before she left. Her jacket didn’t fit; although it was supposed to be a thirty-four chest measurement, it felt more like a sleeping bag, and now the sun was shining at last, she often abandoned it in the office and worked in her own blouse.

The few flowers on the cliffside this year were last year’s tulips, which looked as if they were apologising for their presence in these times when every bit of spare land should be ploughed up for spring vegetables. She was glad to see them, for spring was a strange season: it should make one feel better, but sometimes it did not; it summoned you to achievement, whether you could cope with it or not. In George’s last letter he had written of his camp, which they had managed to discover through Sir John was at Vert
Galant near Amiens. He had been listening to the birds chirping on the airfield, just as if he were at the Rectory. Only he wasn’t, and no amount of cheering talk could disguise it from his family. Two years ago, getting any letter from George was an event; now he was away himself, he too was obviously thinking of home, sending them special cartoons. It made them laugh, but they were undeceived.

Caroline had been impressed to see from a copy of the parish magazine, now produced by Beatrice Ryde, that Father had had a change of heart. Once George’s cartoons were deemed too strong for Ashden; now he insisted, according to Mother, that one was put in every month – even those to do with the war. Gone were the days when Father could hope to exclude war from its columns, for the bereavement notices and memorial service reports had taken the place of many of the staple reports of the festivals and events that had hitherto formed the ritual of the Rectory and church year. Father had tried to struggle on with them, but against ever greater odds. Who was to organise them? Who to attend? And why bother when there were greater priorities on people’s time? Rogation had come and gone with no mention of beating the parish bounds this year. The flower show would no longer be a bone of contention, for there were no flowers. It was a vegetable show alone. Moreover, Mrs Dibble was to be one of the three judges in her new role as government authority on use of food. She had gone quite pink when Father had asked her, and muttered that the show was for the gentry. She didn’t refuse, however.

Caroline hurried into the bureau at nine o’clock,
determined to enjoy every minute of this spring day, even work. Luke was normally in before her, but today there was no sign of him, although one or two of her fellow clerks had arrived. When, fifteen minutes later, he did appear, he came not through the front door but down the stairs.

‘Meeting,’ he explained briefly, ‘in Captain Cameron’s room.’ Instead of putting the usual heap of reports and digests before her, he asked, ‘Can you run over to the French bureau, Caroline? I can’t do it today, and someone has to represent us. They like you.’

‘Only because I’m female,’ she pointed out. ‘They’d like the fat lady from the circus.’

She had been wanting to see the new batch of reports from Olivier Fabre, and she disliked the French bureau. Polite, and indeed over-polite, though they were, the exclusively male staff seemed more interested in what lay under her uniform than what she had brought in her hand, and there were always pressing invitations – sometimes literally – to dinner and when that was refused, luncheon.

‘They’re having their GHQ liaison chap there today, and need a representative from this office present in case he has any questions.’

She thought she understood. After the British success at Arras and the disastrous French attack last month, there must be urgent talks in progress. No one could even guess what would happen on the Russian front now Kerensky had taken control, but that made it all too probable that any new western offensive would be speedy and in the Ypres sector, in order to try to regain the Belgian ports.

When Caroline arrived at the meeting, the spoken
French was too fast for her much of the time, but she was proud of being able to answer – in French – all but one of the few questions they addressed to her (while watching her indulgently as though surprised to hear a woman talk at all of such masculine matters). It took all day, and luncheon – although markedly superior to the sandwich she usually ate on the seafront – was brought in. By the time she was free to go it was gone five-thirty, and she galloped back to report to Luke, before dashing down to the shops in the town centre. She had arranged to go out that evening to the cinema with a friend and had promised her landlady she’d buy her some vegetables and meat before she did so. Mrs Clark did not trust food delivered now; few did, for the delivery boys were merely filling in time before they were called up; it wasn’t a career like it used to be, according to Mrs Clark. They’d dump the stuff in the gutter if they felt like it, and that’s all it was fit for half the time, even if you queued. On the whole, running her errands was preferable to receiving the orders, Caroline decided.

‘Luke, the French are talking about unreliable networks,’ she probed gently. ‘Talk about it tomorrow?’

‘Just keep your bright ideas under that ghastly brown hat of yours just a little longer, sweetheart.’ He grinned maddeningly and she considered whether to ignore the insult or hit him. Ignore it. She rushed upstairs to the first floor where the grand bathroom and water closet of the former house lay, used them, wondered briefly whether the ornate bath on its pretty little legs was ever used nowadays, unbolted the door and dashed out to hurry downstairs and
pick up her jacket. She pitchforked herself straight into a group of officers descending from Captain Cameron’s upper sanctum. ‘I’m sorry—’ She broke off.

It was Yves.

He looked as appalled as she, though he could hardly have been surprised to see her. That was why she’d been sent out of the way, she realised with sinking heart. He’d been there all day, and asked Luke to get rid of her so that he should not be embarrassed by her presence. Well,
he wouldn’t be.

‘Please excuse me,’ she said stiffly, bowed her head in brief acknowledgement of Captain Cameron, and hurtled down the stairs.

Through her confusion, she heard Yves shout something out, then footsteps coming down after her, but she did not look back. She seized her jacket and hat, crammed them on as she ran to the door, opened it, and escaped into the blessed outside world. She shut the door behind her, and it did not open again. She gulped in the sea air to steady her and reminded herself it was her own fault: she had been foolish in thinking that because he had kissed her, he felt about her as she did about him. She had been wrong, that was all. His work was taking him away, and he had dismissed her from his mind. If she took this calmly, her heart as well as her brain would see that was so, and she could proceed with her own life.

Automatically she turned towards the Sandgate Road, then, remembering the dratted shopping, hurried back towards the town centre. She needed some cottons, for mending – Oh, Agnes, where are you? – so she’d go all
the way to Tontine Street where she could pop into Gosnold’s drapery emporium, go to the best greengrocer, the wonderful Messrs Stokes, that nice Mr Hall the pork butcher, and pick up a copy of
Picture-goer
to indulge herself. She’d be finished in fifteen minutes with luck, and back home in half an hour at most. Then she could pull herself together to get over the shock she’d had.

How could all these people be carrying on with life so normally? A woman screaming at a toddler, a Tommy with his arm round a girl, a milk roundsman, an evening-paper seller. To them it was just another evening, to her it was Friday 25th May, and the death of her hopes. No use telling herself she was lucky to be here and not in the trenches, where life was counted in hours not years, where friends made one day were memories the next. Just at the moment she wished she were anyone but Caroline Lilley.

She squinted up in the sky, hearing the sound of a low aeroplane engine as she reached the slope. With all the RFC camps around, they were so frequent nowadays that no one else bothered to look up, but she gave it a friendly wave on George’s behalf. Then someone else did look up, and said something to his companion, who looked up too. Odd. She felt faintly uneasy until the sound of explosions in the distance relaxed her.

How stupid. It was only gun practice. Nothing had been wrong at all. Nevertheless she quickened her step, and turned up Harbour Street. More explosions, nearer, louder. A woman screamed. A man shouted: ‘It’s the fleet. The whole bloody Hun fleet’s in the harbour.’ But it wasn’t
to the harbour she looked. It was up into the blue sky she’d so admired that morning.

Everyone was gazing up now, and it wasn’t just one place, it was a whole formation roaring towards them. ‘God bless the RFC,’ someone shouted. Someone cheered. The aircraft were almost overhead, and splitting up, fanning out. Then fear gripped her, stifled her, as a man yelled out: ‘They’re fucking Huns!’

Almost instantly she was swallowed up in deafening noise all around her; her own scream and those of the people around her were indistinguishable, each in their own isolated pockets of terror, surrounded by a wall of thunder. The ground beneath her was shaking, and she was cannoned into a fruit barrow, rocking at her side. Ahead of her in Tontine Street an enormous pall of smoke and dust was rising, and the noise went on. Around her, many people were instinctively rushing for shelter, but she managed to stay still by gripping the barrow. Why court danger in buildings that might be on the point of collapse? Further off the bombs were obviously still falling. She was choking on the debris falling all around her. When the noise stopped, there was an eerie silence, more frightening than anything that preceded it. Around her she could see people crouched in doorways, or lying on the ground where they had thrown themselves. And, ahead of them, where the first bomb had fallen, lay what?

The terrible memory of the night of the gaiety bomb rose up to engulf her, the torn-off limbs, the mutilated torsos, the blood, and worse. And she must face it again; she was trained in first aid.

Her legs refused to work. Why couldn’t she force them to propel her towards the carnage that must lie ahead? She wanted to go, she had to go, but she couldn’t move. She found herself crouching on the ground, hugging her knees, rocking to and fro, cowering in fear, moaning. The horror swelled up inside her, and burst out in one uncontrollable angry cry.

‘Not again! Dear God, not again!’

Then arms seized her from behind, forced her to her feet, and held her close.

‘Caroline,
cara mia, cara mia,
’ nothing else, just that repeated over and over as he stroked her hair and soothed her, dust and debris still floating down. She could hear nothing else save the sound of bells, church bells, fire-engine bells – what did it matter? Nothing mattered.

‘Not again,’ she sobbed once more into Yves’ shoulder.

‘Never again,
never.
Are you hurt?’

Was she hurt? Something must have hit her hard for there was blood all down one arm, but she didn’t seem otherwise injured. So that meant—

‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t go into
that
.’

‘You must,
cara
, with me. We both must. Only for a little while.’

‘With you?’

‘Yes.’

Tears that she was too weak to control streamed down her face. She stumbled on, his arm round her, stopping at doorways to see if there were injured people, until they reached Tontine Street. He glanced at her anxiously.

‘Stay here,
cara
, I will go.’

‘I’m coming.’ Somehow she found the strength. If Felicia could do it, so could she – now Yves was there. He put out a hand to steady her, and she fixed her gaze on it. She couldn’t let go of his hands again.

And so they entered Tontine Street.

Where was the greengrocers? That huge shop was only a pile of timber. The front of Gosnold’s opposite had vanished. The butcher’s shop a little further along was on the point of collapse, and many others. And where were the hundreds of shoppers, chiefly women and children, who would have been here filling the shops and thronging the streets? She forced herself to look ahead of her. They were dead, dying or injured. Parts of bodies lay mixed with timber, brick and stone. Those who had sheltered in shop doorways lay heaped together, dead and covered with rubble, hands, feet, baskets sticking out to reveal their presence. Colour, save for red, had vanished in a mound of grey. The red was blood and—