‘Just weeks. I got a few days' embarkation leave.’
Their conversation brought them to the end of the jetty, and once more they stopped to face each other.
‘Where are you going?’ Judith asked.
‘I'm actually headed for Captain Curtice's house. He's an old shipmate of my father's. They were at Dartmouth together. He sent me a signal, bidding me to go and visit, and pay my respects.’
‘What time are you due?’
‘Eighteen-thirty.’
‘In that case, you have two choices. You can either go that way’ — she indicated the narrow path that led along the shore line — ‘…and climb about a hundred steps up into his garden, or else you can take the less arduous route and walk up the road.’
‘Which way are you going?’
‘By the road.’
‘Then I'll come with you.’
So, companionably, they strolled on, up the dusty white road — scored with the wheel-tracks of countless trucks — that led through Naval Headquarters. They came to the high fence, strung with barbed wire, and the gate. Open, because it was still daylight, but guarded by two young seamen sentries who sprang to attention and saluted as Toby Whitaker passed through. Beyond the gates the main road curved away beneath the palms, but there wasn't much farther to walk and presently they came to another pair of guarded gates, and entry to the Wrens' Quarters.
Judith turned to face him. ‘This is me, so here we take our leave.’
He gazed with some interest at the prospect beyond the gates, and the sloping track leading to the long palm-thatched building that was the Wrens' mess and their recreation room. Its verandas were smothered in bougainvillaea, and there was a Flame of the Forest tree and borders burgeoning with flowers. He said, ‘From here it looks extremely attractive.’
‘I suppose so. It's not bad. A bit like a little village, or a holiday camp. The bandas, where we sleep, are on the far side, facing out over the cove, and we've got our own private swimming jetty.’
‘I suppose no man is allowed to set foot?’
‘If he's invited, he can. Come to the mess for tea and or a drink. But the bandas and the cove are strictly out of bounds.’
‘Fair enough.’ He hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘If I asked you, would you come out with me one evening? Dinner or something? The only thing is, I'm a bit green here. I wouldn't know where to take you.’
‘There's the Officers' Club. Or the Chinese Restaurant. Nowhere else really.’
‘Would you come?’
It was Judith's turn to hesitate. She had a number of male friends with whom she regularly went dining and dancing, sailing, swimming, and picnicking. But they were all old acquaintances from the Portsmouth days, tried and true and strictly platonic. Since Edward's death and Jeremy's perfidy, she had resolutely set her face against any sort of emotional involvement, but in Trincomalee, this was proving a complicated business, simply because of the overwhelming number of perfectly presentable young men mad for female company.
On the other hand, Toby Whitaker was someone from the past, he knew the Somervilles, and had a home in Devon, and it would be pleasant to be able to talk about the old days, and Uncle Bob, and Biddy and Ned. As well, he was married. Of course, the fact that one's date was a married man, did not, in this unnatural environment, account for much, as Judith had learned from bitter experience. Sexual passions, egged on by tropical moons, whispering palms, and months of enforced celibacy, proved impossible to suppress, and the distant wife and the brood of children were easily banished from mind in the heat of the moment. She had fought her way, more than once, out of just such an embarrassing situation, and had no intention of such a situation happening again.
The silence lengthened, as he waited for her reply. Wary, she considered his suggestion. She did not find him particularly attractive, but on the other hand, he did not look like a pouncer. More likely to spend his time telling her about his children and — dreaded prospect — producing photographs.
Harmless enough. And perhaps ill mannered and hurtful to refuse outright. She said, ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Super.’
‘I'd like to. But not dinner. More fun to go somewhere and swim. On Saturday, perhaps. I get Saturdays off.’
‘Perfect. But I'm a new boy here. Where would we go?’
‘The best is the YWCA.’
He bucked visibly. ‘The YWCA?’
‘It's all right. It's called a hostel, but it's a bit like a little hotel. Not all Holy Tracts and PingPong tables. In fact, the very opposite. You can even get a drink.’
‘Where is this place?’
‘Over on the other side of Fort Frederick. On a beach, with perfect swimming. Men are only allowed there if they're the guest of some female or other, so it's never crowded. And it's run by a splendid lady called Mrs Todd-Harper. We call her Toddy. She's a great character.’
‘Tell me more.’
‘No time now. Too long a story. I'll explain on Saturday.’ (If conversation should lag, which it well might, Toddy would provide a talking point.)
‘How do we get there?’
‘We can climb on some naval lorry or truck. They shuttle to and fro all the time, like buses.’
‘Where shall I meet you?’
‘Right here. At the gate, around eleven-thirty.’
‘Perfect.’
She watched him go, setting off at a smart pace up the hill, his white shoes already brown with dust. Shed of him, she sighed, wondering what she had let herself in for, and then turned and went through the gate and the Regulating Office (no letters in her small box) and so on, up the driveway. In the dining-hall of the mess, the Sinhalese stewards were already serving an early supper for the watch-keepers. Judith paused to help herself to a glass of lime juice and drink it down, and then went out onto the terrace, where a couple of girls were entertaining their boy-friends who lay, in unaccustomed comfort, on long cane chairs. From the terrace a concrete pathway led to the far side of the camp, where the sleeping bandas and ablution blocks were grouped, in a pleasant haphazard fashion, beneath trees which had been left for shade when this particular section of jungle was bulldozed by the sappers, and the camp erected.
At this time of day, there were always a good many girls about, and a lot of coming and going. The Wrens who worked ashore finished their day at four o'clock, and so had plenty of time for a game of tennis or a swim. From ablution blocks half-naked figures strolled casually, wearing thong sandals and small bath-towels and nothing else. Others wandered about in bathing-suits, pegged underwear to washing-lines, or had already changed into the khaki slacks and long-sleeved shirts which were regulation evening wear in this area of malarial mosquitoes.
Malaria was not the only hazard. Not long ago there had been a typhoid scare, which had entailed everybody queuing up for painful injections and suffering the subsequent discomfort. As well, there lurked a host of minor ailments, likely, at a moment's notice, to strike any person down. Sunburn and Trinco tummy inevitably laid low any girl newly out from England and not yet accustomed to the sun and the heat. Dengue fever was like the worst sort of 'flu. Being constantly in a state of sweat brought out rashes of prickly heat and tropical impetigo, and the most trivial of mosquito- or ant-bite was apt to turn septic if not instantly doused in a solution of Dettol. Part of every girl's kit was a bottle of Dettol, and the ablution blocks always smelt of it, and carbolic fluid that the night sweepers used when they emptied and scrubbed out the thunder-boxes.
Twelve beds stood on either side of the long banda, not unlike a school dormitory, but a great deal more primitive. Each bed had beside it a chest of drawers and a chair. Wooden pegs did duty as wardrobes. The floor was concrete, and wooden fans, high in the palm-thatch ceiling, stirred the air into some semblance of coolness. Over each bed, like some monstrous bell, hung a white knotted mosquito net.
As always at this hour of the day, a number of separate activities were going on. At the far end of the band
a, one girl, wrapped in her bath towel, sat on her bed with a portable typewriter on her bare knees, and tapped out a letter home. Others lay reading books, perusing mail, blancoing shoes, filing their nails. Two sat and gossiped together and giggled over a sheaf of photographs. Another had put a Bing Crosby record on her portable gramophone, and listened to his voice while she wound her wet hair into pin-curls. The record was very old and well-played, grinding and scratching beneath the steel needle.
When the Deep Purple falls
Over sleepy garden walls.
Her own bed; the closest thing to home Judith had known for over a year. She dropped her bag, stripped off her filthy clothes, knotted a bath towel around her waist, and flopped down on the bed, her hands linked beneath her head, to lie and stare up at the revolving paddles of the fan.
It was strange how things happened, a procession of events. Days passed when she didn't even think of Cornwall and Devon, The Dower House and Nancherrow. This was partly because there was little opportunity for brooding, and partly because she had learned that nostalgia was a pretty useless exercise. Old times, old friends, the old life, were all an age away, a lost world. Her demanding job occupied much of her mind, and quiet interludes of introspection were rendered impossible by the fact that she was never alone, but constantly surrounded by other people, not always likeable or sympathetic.
But then, a moment, a chance encounter. Toby Whitaker, bouncing up out of the blue, catching her unawares. Talking about Upper Bickley, and Biddy and Bob, precipitating a flood of recollections that had lain dormant for months. She remembered, exactly, the day when he had turned up to take Bob Somerville away. She and Bob had been for a walk on the moors with Morag, and Bob had still been wearing his old country tweeds and his walking boots…
And now, ‘Deep Purple’ and Bing Crosby. ‘Deep Purple’ was inextricably entwined with those last days of the summer of 1939, because Athena had brought the record down from London, and played it constantly on the radiogram in the drawing room at Nancherrow.
In the still of the night,
Once again I hold you tight.
She thought of the group. The picture that had never been painted, but remained in her imagination like a work accomplished, framed, hung upon some wall. Before Lunch. Nancherrow. 1939. The green lawns, the blue sky, the sea, the breeze skittering the fringe of Diana's sun-umbrella, its dark shadow cast upon the grass. And the figures who sat about in deck-chairs, or cross-legged on tartan rugs. Then they had all been together, apparently idle and privileged, but each with his or her own private reservations and fears; painfully aware of the coming war. But had any of them had any idea of how it was going to shatter their lives, blow them apart and disperse them all to the far ends of the earth? Her mind's eye travelled around the little group, counting them off one by one.
Edward first, of course. The golden charmer, loved by all. Dead. Shot out of the sky during the Battle of Britain. Edward would never return to Nancherrow, would never again laze on the lawn in the Sunday sunshine.
Athena; diligently constructing a daisy chain. Shining blonde head, bare arms the colour of dark honey. Then not even engaged to Rupert Rycroft. Now she was twenty-eight, and Clementina was five years old, and Clementina had scarcely ever seen her father.
Rupert, supine in a deck-chair, bony knees jutting. The archetypal Guards officer, tall, leathery, drawling-voiced; marvellously confident and entirely without guile. Because he had survived the North African Campaign, and fought his way through Sicily, one somehow imagined that he had been blessed with a charmed life, only to hear the shattering tidings that he had been nigh-mortally wounded in Germany, soon after the Allied Forces crossed the Rhine, and had finished up in a military hospital, somewhere in England, where the doctors had amputated his right leg. This news had been conveyed to Judith in a letter from Diana who, though clearly much dismayed, could scarcely conceal her relief that her son-in-law had not actually lost his life.
Gus Callender. The dark, reserved young Scot, and Edward's friend. The engineering student, the artist, the soldier, who had slipped so briefly into all their lives, only to disappear, snuffed out in the mayhem of the fighting during the defence of Singapore. He is dead, Loveday had insisted, and because she was carrying Walter Mudge's child, her family had gone along with her conviction, because if any person knew that Gus had survived, then it would be Loveday. As well, her happiness and well-being were paramount, and Diana and Edgar wanted to keep her with them forever. So Gus was dead. Only Judith, it seemed, remained unconvinced. She stayed unconvinced until Loveday's wedding, and after that there didn't seem much point in keeping the flame of hope burning. The die had been cast. Loveday was married. And now a Cornish farmer's wife, and the mother of Nathaniel, who had to be the largest, toughest, and most vociferous baby boy Judith had ever encountered. Gus's name was no longer mentioned. He was gone.
And finally, the last. Jeremy Wells.
News of him, too, had filtered out to Judith via letters from home. He had come through the Battle of the Atlantic, and had been posted to the Mediterranean, but that was all she knew. Since the night she had spent with him in Diana's house in London, she had received no word; no message, no letter. She told herself that he had taken himself out of her life, but sometimes, like right now, she yearned to see his homely face again, to be in his reassuring presence, to talk. Perhaps one day he would turn up out of the blue, in Trincomalee, Surgeon Commander of some cruiser or battleship. And yet, if this happened, and he sought her out, what would they have to say to each other, after all the years of non-communication? There could only be restraint and awkwardness. Time had healed the hurt that he had inflicted, but the wound had left her wary. Once bitten, twice shy. And what was the point of recrimination, and the opening up of old scars?
‘Is Judith Dunbar in here?’
The voice, raised, dispelled her thoughts. She stirred, and realised that it was now dark, the abrupt sunset had fallen, and beyond the open palm-thatch shutters, the night was deepening into a dark, jewel-like blue. One of the other Wrens was making her way down the banda towards Judith's bed. She had short dark hair and horn-rimmed spectacles, and was dressed in slacks and a long-sleeved shirt. Judith recognised her. A Leading Wren called Anne Dawkins, who worked in the Pay Office, and boasted a cheerful cockney accent you could cut with a knife.
‘Yes, I'm here…’ She sat up, not bothering to draw the bath-towel up over her naked breasts.
‘Ever so sorry to burst in, but I've just looked through my mail and I've got one of your letters by mistake. Must have picked it up with mine. Thought I'd better bring it straight over…’
She handed it over, an envelope fat and bulky. Judith looked at the address and saw Loveday's writing, and experienced a spooky nudge of coincidence. Toby Whitaker, then Deep Purple, and now a letter from Loveday. Really strange. Loveday scarcely ever wrote letters, and Judith hadn't had one from her in months. She hoped that nothing was wrong.
Anne Dawkins hovered, still apologetic. ‘…foolish of me…don't know what I was thinking of.’
‘It doesn't matter. Honestly. Thanks for bringing it.’
She took herself off. Judith watched her go, and then plumped up her pillows and leaned back against them, slitting the envelope with her thumb-nail. From it she withdrew the wodge of folded sheets of airmail paper. Eye-flies were hovering around her face. She set the knot of her mosquito net swinging to chase them away, opened the letter and began to read.
Lidgey,
Rosemullion.
22nd July 1945.
Darling Judith, don't have a fit, getting a letter from me. I'm sure you think something must be terribly wrong, but have no fear, no bad news. Just that Nat and I have just been for tea with them all at The Dower House, and it seemed so funny without you there, and I missed you so much that I thought I would write a letter. Nat, thank God, is asleep and Walter's gone to the pub to have a jar with his mates. Nat isn't in his bed but on the sofa, right here in the
kitchen. If you put him to bed, he yowls and gets out of it again, so I usually let him do this, and them hump him through to his cot. He weighs a ton. He's two and a half now, and the biggest thing you've ever seen, with black hair and nearly black eyes and endless energy and a terrible temper. He never wants to be indoors, even when it's raining stair-rods, and all he wants is to be out on the farm and preferably driving the tractor with his father. He sits between Walter's knees and quite often goes to sleep, and Walter takes no notice of him and just goes on with what he's meant to be doing. The only time he behaves himself is when he's at Nancherrow, because he's a bit scared of Pops and certainly of Mary Millyway, who doesn't let him get away with a single thing.
Having tea with Biddy, she told me that your Uncle Bob has been posted to Colombo, and is already there. Isn't it funny that you have both ended up out there together? Or perhaps not so funny, as now the war in Europe is over I suppose just about the entire Royal Navy will be headed east. I wonder if you've seen him yet, Uncle Bob, I mean; I looked on the map and it's right the other side of the island from Trincomalee, so probably not.
And I wonder if Jeremy Wells will come your way as well? The last we heard of him, he was in Gibraltar with the Seventh Fleet. He spent so long battling to and fro across the Atlantic, it must be heaven to be in the Med. Lots of sunshine anyway.
News of Nancherrow. It's very empty and sad because about two months ago Athena and Clementina packed up and left, to go and live in Gloucestershire with Rupert. Either Mummy or Biddy or someone will have told you that he was dreadfully badly wounded in Germany just after the crossing of the Rhine, and had to have his right leg amputated. (Dreadfully cruel, when you think that he went the whole way in the Western Desert from Alamein to Tripoli, and then into Sicily and all that fighting without a single scratch, only to get clobbered so near the end of the war.) Anyway, he was brought home, and was in hospital for yonks, and then in a sort of rehabilitation place learning to walk with a tin leg. Athena left Clementina with Mary and Mummy, and was away for quite a bit, staying near the hospitals and being with him. But of course he couldn't stay in the regiment with a tin leg, so has been invalided out, and he and Athena are living in a little farmhouse on his father's estate, and he's going to learn all about running the place when his old pa finally turns himself out to grass. It was horrid saying goodbye to Athena and Clementina, but she wasn't too reluctant to go, and I think is simply thankful that he wasn't killed. She's phoned once or twice and says that Gloucestershire is very pretty, and the house will be pretty too, once she's had time to get her hands on it. A bit difficult with everything still rationed, you can't even get curtains or blankets or sheets without clothing coupons!