‘I really don’t think you should be here by yourself, Soph,’ he said, dumping his bag on Veronica’s bed and frowning at the window panes, half of which have had to be replaced with plywood. ‘Aunt C would have a fit if she knew you were waiting out the raids alone in that cellar.’
‘Then don’t tell her,’ I suggested. ‘Have you had luncheon? Do you want a cup of tea or something?’
‘I mean it, Soph,’ he insisted. ‘Can’t you go and stay with that girl from work? Or at least go to the public shelter?’
‘Anne doesn’t have any space – she shares a tiny bed-sitter with a friend – and that public shelter down the road smells absolutely disgusting. I’m not sleeping in there. Anyway, the ARP warden always comes round to check on me in the morning if there’s been a raid. It’s nowhere near as frightening as it used to be, and there haven’t been any really big raids for ages.’
‘There will be,’ Toby said, with the grim conviction of one who’d spent the past three months studying the Luftwaffe at terrifyingly close range. ‘It’s just that they’re busy blitzing the north at the moment. You wait, they’ll be back in deadly earnest any day now –’
The telephone rang to interrupt this cheerful conversation. It was Mrs Timms.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ she said, ‘but I’m going over to Bristol to stay with my daughter-in-law for a couple of days, and I can’t get hold of Mr Rupert, and I hate the thought of leaving poor Lady Whittingham here by herself.’
‘Julia?’ I said, surprised. ‘But I thought she was with her mother at Astley?’
‘No, no, she’s here and won’t barely leave her bedroom, either. Crying her eyes out most of the time, too.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Toby, snatching up his car keys. So we drove straight around to Julia’s Belgravia house, where Mrs Timms met us at the front door in her coat and hat.
‘She’s in the sitting room,’ said Mrs Timms, nodding over her shoulder. ‘Poor dear, I’ve left her dinner in the oven, not that she’s eating anything much nowadays. She ought to be with her family at a time like this . . . But I do feel easier, now you’re here to talk some sense into her. Well, I’m off.’
We found Julia hunched over on the sofa nearest the fire, huddled inside a brocade housecoat that seemed far too large for her. I was horrified to see how ill she looked – her face greenish and drawn, with dark hollows under her eyes. She’d combed her hair and put on some lipstick, but this gave the impression of having been achieved with great effort.
‘Darling, what are you doing here, all alone?’ said Toby. ‘Why aren’t you at Astley?’
‘Oh,’ she said, making a feeble attempt at a smile, ‘you know how Mummy gets, fussing away. It all got a bit much for me . . . But what are you doing in London, Toby?’
I suddenly thought how dreadful it must be for her, to see Toby fit and well in his RAF uniform, when all that remained of Anthony was that photograph on her desk. But Julia barely seemed to notice what Toby was wearing – in fact, she seemed to be having difficulties concentrating on anything at all, possibly because she was so undernourished. There was a slice of dry toast with a few unenthusiastic bites taken out of it, sitting on the side table beside a glass of water. If that was all she’d been ingesting, no wonder she looked so thin and tired. I offered to go downstairs and make some sandwiches, but she shook her head violently.
‘I couldn’t face it,’ she said, then she clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, no. Back in a moment,’ she mumbled, and she hurried out of the room.
Toby and I exchanged looks. ‘Oh, Lord,’ he said. ‘You don’t think she’s . . . Could she be?’
I was still busy calculating dates when Julia came back in, looking slightly less green.
‘I always think I’m going to be sick, but I hardly ever am,’ she said, slumping back on the sofa. ‘I just feel queasy every single second of the day. I can’t imagine why they ever decided to call it morning sickness.’
‘Have you seen a doctor?’ said Toby.
She shook her head, frowning at her knees.
‘But Julia, you really must,’ he urged. ‘You look dreadful and it can’t be healthy, eating nothing but toast –’
‘I can’t!’ she cried, startling us all. Then she said, more calmly, ‘I can’t. He’s Mummy’s doctor, too, and he’d tell her. That’s why I came back to London, as soon as I started feeling sick all the time. So she wouldn’t work it out for herself.’
‘But what does it matter, whether she finds out now or later on?’ said Toby, sounding bemused. He put a comforting arm around Julia. ‘I know the timing isn’t . . . That is, it’s all very sad that it’s happened now, but your mother would be such a help for you. And Ant’s family will be so pleased when they hear –’ Toby looked over Julia’s bent head and finally caught my frantic head-shaking. ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I’m an idiot.’
‘Yes, you are,’ said Julia, but she sagged against him. I reached over and clasped her hand, and she gave a half-hearted squeeze back.
‘You poor old thing,’ said Toby. ‘But are you absolutely sure that it can’t be . . .?’
‘Certain,’ Julia said. ‘I hadn’t seen Ant for two and a half months before . . . before he died. And I’d just written to his mother complaining about how he never seemed to get any leave any more, and how I’d probably have to wait till Christmas to see him again.’ Her eyes filled with tears, but she swiped at them impatiently. ‘Anyway, I know exactly when it happened.’
‘Well, have you told . . . him?’ asked Toby. ‘I suppose he’s in one of the services?’
‘I only saw him once,’ said Julia, ‘and I never want to see him again. The whole thing was completely mad, I do realise that now, but at the time I was just so . . . numb. So dead, really. I wanted to feel alive again. It was after the memorial service, when I was travelling back to Astley and that wretched railway track got bombed. Our train just stopped, in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, in the pitch black. The railway station wasn’t far away, but when we finally got there, I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting about for hours on that freezing platform, so I went looking for a taxi and . . . and that’s where I met him. Then the siren started up again and we could hear the planes coming back . . . Anyway, we went to a hotel, and he bought me a drink. Several drinks. And I felt so sorry for him. He was all alone, too . . .’ She glanced up. ‘You think I’m dreadful, don’t you?’
‘Of course we don’t,’ Toby said soothingly. ‘I go to bed with people I feel sorry for, all the time. I think of it as doing my bit for the war effort – you know, boosting the morale of Allied servicemen.’
‘Toby!’ I said. ‘Be serious.’ But Julia had given an unwilling snort of laughter.
‘If only everyone saw things your way, Toby,’ she said. ‘But they don’t, of course, which is why I’m in such terrible trouble now.’
‘I still don’t see why,’ said Toby. ‘Really, how will anyone know that Ant isn’t the father? Unless . . . this man wasn’t from Jamaica or somewhere, was he?’
‘No,’ said Julia dully. ‘No, he was Free French. Probably. I don’t know, he could have been lying about that. He certainly lied when he promised me he’d be careful. Anyway, I’ve told you about not having seen Ant for months. His parents know all about that, they’d work it out straight away.’
‘Well, never mind,’ Toby said. ‘You can marry me, and tell them it’s my child. Actually, perhaps it is mine. I can’t say I remember doing anything of that nature, but I suppose I could have been drunk at the time.’
‘Oh, stop it, Toby,’ said Julia. ‘I’m trying to figure some way out of this horrible mess, and you’re just –’
‘I’m being completely sincere,’ he said, tightening his grasp on her shoulders. ‘Julia. Listen. Aunt Charlotte’s been trying to find me a wife for years, and I can’t keep putting her off forever. And if you had a husband, you wouldn’t have a problem, would you? I suppose there’d be a bit of gossip about how quickly you got
married again, but Aunt Charlotte already thinks I’m madly in love with you, and everyone knows how irresistible I am. And we do love each other, don’t we, darling? We’ve always had fun together. Lots of married couples have far less in common than we have.’
Julia had been staring at him, open-mouthed, throughout this speech.
‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Not that you have to decide this very second, but –’
‘Oh, Toby,’ she said.
Then she burst into tears and flung her arms around his neck.
‘Tea,’ he mouthed at me over the top of her head, as he patted her back. I gazed at him in disbelief, shook my head slowly, then stalked off to the kitchen.
‘This whole world has gone crazy,’ I told the cat, who was giving himself a vigorous bath on top of the draining board. I put the kettle on and sat down to have a think, but my mind was a whirl. Mostly I felt desperately sorry for Julia. I could only imagine her panic when she realised she was pregnant. And feeling so dreadfully sick all the time would make things seem even worse. Of course, I was shocked at the idea of her going off with some stranger like that – but then, she was a widow now. She hadn’t been cheating on anyone. Anthony wouldn’t have wanted her to spend the rest of her life in a nunnery – although I expect he’d have hoped she’d wait a bit longer than a week before replacing him. Still, it sounded as though she’d been rather drunk, and she’d definitely been under enormous emotional strain. Poor Julia! Being punished so severely for one bad decision – when that man, whoever he was, probably hadn’t felt so much as a twinge of regret.
As for Toby’s proposal . . . well, I suppose he and Julia are fond of each other . . . But, no, the whole thing was absolutely ridiculous!
And so my thoughts see-sawed back and forth, as I waited for the kettle to whistle, and the cat scrubbed at his face with his paw. Then I made a pot of tea, found some jam biscuits in a tin and took the tray upstairs. Toby still had his arm around Julia, and she was dabbing at her face with his handkerchief.
‘So, should I be congratulating you on your engagement?’ I asked, as I set the tray down on the table. Oh dear, I hadn’t meant to say that aloud . . .
Julia gave me a watery smile and shook her head. Then she turned to Toby. ‘No. It’s awfully kind of you to offer, Toby darling, but I can’t do that to you. Your aunt loathes me – she’d probably disinherit you. Besides, I can’t go through with . . . with this. I can’t bring a child into the world right now, not when everything’s in such chaos. Especially this child . . . No, actually, I don’t think that matters. I’d feel the same if it were Ant’s.’
She leaned forward and rested her face in her hands. ‘Oh God, and I don’t even know how to go about being . . . not pregnant. Apart from hurling myself down the stairs. One would think all these bombs would have frightened it out, but all they do is make me even sicker. I just can’t bear the thought of feeling like this, every waking moment, for months and months. If it goes on much longer, I really will end up throwing myself off the top landing –’
‘Julia,’ I said worriedly, ‘you mustn’t say things like that. Here, sit up and have some tea. Or . . . can you drink tea?’
‘I can sometimes, if it doesn’t have milk in it,’ she sighed. ‘Or sugar. But coffee always tastes like mud now, no matter what.’
She accepted the cup, took a cautious sip and gave me a grateful nod. Toby took a biscuit, and Julia glanced at it, then shuddered.
‘I know it’s against the law,’ she said, after we’d sat in silence for a while, ‘but there must be doctors who’d . . . help. I wouldn’t have a clue how to find one of them, though.’
‘Have you asked Daphne?’ said Toby. ‘She’d know about this sort of thing, wouldn’t she?’
Julia gave a croaky laugh. ‘I’m going to tell her you said that. No, she’s away on a training course, learning how to be a welder.’
‘Well, ring her up,’ said Toby. ‘Or write, or go and see her. But you can’t put it off too long, or the decision will be made for you. My offer still stands, by the way. Just so you know you do have options.’
‘You are a darling,’ she said, leaning over and kissing his cheek. She looked up at me as I poured her more tea. ‘You both are. I can’t thank you enough for coming over here. I was in complete and utter despair before. Now, I’m just . . . very depressed.’
‘Actually, Soph, why don’t you stay here for a while?’ said Toby, which was just what I’d been thinking. He turned back to Julia. ‘Veronica’s away, you see, and Soph’s all alone at the flat.’
‘Oh, darling, yes, do come and stay,’ said Julia, at once. ‘If you can bear to, that is – I’m hardly cheerful company at the moment. You too, Toby, if you’ve got an overnight pass.’
So after we finished our tea, we drove back to the flat, collected our things and returned, arriving just in time for the Warning siren. Which is why I’m writing this at Julia’s kitchen table. The light is certainly better than in our cellar, but the clatter of the Hyde Park anti-aircraft guns on top of the screaming bombs is a bit annoying. Julia is asleep on the little bed in the corner, with the cat curled up in the bend of her knees, and Toby is hunkered over a bottle of brandy at the other end of the table, bracing himself at each whistle and wincing at each subsequent thud.
‘God, this is awful,’ he says. ‘How do you stand it, night after night? Stuck underground, with no way of shooting back at them! When you can’t even see what’s going on outside!’ The house trembles again, the brandy bottle clinking delicately against Toby’s crystal tumbler. ‘And how on Earth is Julia managing to sleep through this?’
‘She’s exhausted,’ I say.
‘Poor old thing,’ he says, gazing at her. ‘This whole mess seems so unfair, doesn’t it? It must be absolutely horrible, being a girl.’
It is, sometimes. Still, being a boy during wartime must be fairly horrible, too.
24th December, 1940
IT’S CHRISTMAS, AND WE’RE ALL together at Milford. Aunt Charlotte is thrilled about it – although she became slightly less thrilled when she saw Simon climbing out of the passenger side of Toby’s car this afternoon.
‘But I thought you were going to visit that mother of yours, Simon,’ she said.
‘She’s on a retreat, ma’am,’ Simon said. ‘A prayer vigil for peace.’
‘A prayer vigil?’ said Aunt Charlotte. ‘At this time of year? How extraordinary. But I do wish you’d told us you were coming.’
‘I did tell you, darling Aunt Charlotte,’ said Toby, hugging her, ‘when I rang on Sunday. But you must have been so delighted to hear my dulcet tones that you didn’t pay any attention to the actual words I was saying.’
‘Well, I really don’t know how we’re supposed to fit another person inside this tiny little cottage,’ grumbled Aunt Charlotte. ‘It’s not like the old days, you know, when one lived in a proper house.’
‘Oh, Simon can sleep in my room,’ said Toby, turning back to the car for his bag.
‘My dear boy, there isn’t space in there for so much as a mattress on the floor!’
‘He’ll just have to share my bed, then,’ said Toby innocently.
‘Don’t be silly, Tobias,’ said Aunt Charlotte, leading the way back inside the gatehouse. ‘Now, let me think. Mr Herbert still has all those evacuees at the vicarage, doesn’t he, Barnes?’
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ said Barnes. ‘And I’m afraid the village inn has soldiers billeted there this month.’
‘There is no room at the inn, Simon,’ said Henry. ‘You’ll have to sleep in the stables.’
‘The stables!’ said Aunt Charlotte, ignoring our collective giggling fit. ‘Yes, that’s it, there’s the flat over the stables. You can have the room that the stable girls use.’
‘Are the stable girls there?’ enquired Simon.
‘No, no, of course not, they’ve both gone home for Christmas.’
‘What a pity,’ he said. ‘It does get very cold at night in the countr
y . . .’
‘You can borrow Carlos to keep you warm in your manger,’ said Veronica. ‘As long as you don’t mind the odd flea.’
‘And if you ask Estella very nicely, she might agree to join you,’ said Henry. ‘But you’ll have to have all her piglets, too.’
‘You children are in a very silly mood,’ observed Aunt Charlotte. ‘The excitement of the holidays, I expect,’ she added indulgently.
But it wasn’t that we were eagerly anticipating our presents or longing to gorge ourselves on festive treats. After all, not even Henry bothers to hang up a Christmas stocking any more, and the combination of food rationing and a lack of kitchen staff means that this year’s Christmas dinner is likely to be meagre fare indeed, compared to past feasts. No, it was simply that we were all so happy to be here together; that we were all still alive. That was our Christmas miracle. And Aunt Charlotte felt the same, I could tell. Her usual fond regard of Toby was sharpened with a sort of anxious gratitude, and she seized upon his every remark with fervour. At one stage, as Barnes was serving tea, Toby happened to note that the angel was missing from its usual position at the top of the Christmas tree.
‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ said Aunt Charlotte at once. ‘Barnes, go and find it, will you? No point having a tree, if one doesn’t do the thing properly! Where is it?’
‘Well, Your Highness, it wasn’t possible to bring all the decorations down here from the house, so I thought perhaps, just the tinsel and the glass baubles would –’
‘Nonsense! Sophia, you’ve finished your tea, haven’t you? You’ll run up to the house for it, won’t you? Barnes will tell you where she packed it away.’
Which is how I found myself trudging up the long gravel driveway, shivering in the icy wind, all the way to ‘the house’ (Aunt Charlotte never refers to it as ‘the hospital’, or even acknowledges that anyone else lives there now). The façade looked much the same, except for an ambulance parked near the front doors, and a pair of nurses in red capes chatting to the driver. I sidled past, hoping they were too absorbed in their conversation to notice me, and headed for the side entrance. Technically, I was trespassing on government property, although Barnes had assured me that the doctor in charge was fairly relaxed about rules. Not entirely relaxed, I realised, when I found two of the side doors locked. I continued round to the back of the house, where the terrace had undergone a transformation, and not a very attractive one. The marble steps had been replaced by a concrete ramp and aluminium hand rails. One of the stone lions had lost an ear and part of his mane, and the terrace balustrade was mottled with ashy spots and the concertinaed stubs of cigarettes. The lacy wrought-iron table and chairs had vanished, too, probably sacrificed to Aunt Charlotte’s WVS metal salvage scheme. Instead, there was a long wooden trestle table, a couple of benches and a wickerwork bath chair – all unoccupied, which wasn’t very surprising, given the weather.