The FitzOsbornes at War

  I didn’t have enough energy left to argue about it, so we took her with us.

  ‘Henry!’ cried Julia. ‘Each time I set eyes upon you, you look more and more like your gorgeous brother!’

  Henry glowed. ‘Did you know I’m thirteen now?’ she said, as Julia took our coats.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Julia said. ‘Darling, you are getting old. But I do wish you’d stop growing, you make Sophie and me feel awfully short. Now, come into my sitting room – I was just doing some sewing. This wretched blackout! I had to pack away all my lovely sheer silk curtains, but look, I found this very heavy, dark blue velvet and I’m sewing silver stars onto it. See? When I draw the curtains after dusk, it will be as though we’re outside on a clear night. Well, I say “we”, even though I’ve been completely abandoned by everyone, including most of the servants. Rupert’s just left, actually, off doing his super-secret job in Cornwall this week. He will be sorry to have missed you –’

  ‘How’s Anthony?’ I asked quickly, before Julia could start teasing me about Rupert (she’s worse than Barnes, sometimes).

  Julia sighed and shook her head. ‘Oh, the poor darling. He still hasn’t got over the Soviets signing that treaty with the Nazis. He feels awfully conflicted, going off to war, knowing he’s on the opposite side to the Communists. Thank Heavens we aren’t actually fighting the Communists yet . . . or fighting anyone, really. That’s what I don’t understand. I mean, didn’t we declare war because Germany invaded Poland? But what have we done to help the poor old Poles? We just seem to be sitting back, watching them get annihilated in this awful blitzkrieg.’

  ‘I suppose the Allies are conserving their resources for when the Germans march into France,’ said Veronica. ‘Or whichever country they’re planning to invade next.’

  ‘Oh, Veronica, don’t say that! I don’t even want to think about poor Ant going into battle. Can you imagine it? He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Although I must say, he’s loving the actual aeroplanes in the air force. All his letters are about how marvellously fast they are, and how well they turn, and something about g-forces, whatever they are. I’m just hoping he’ll get a job training pilots and spend the rest of the war doing that, but of course, he’ll want to do his brave bit if the time comes. How’s Toby?’

  Henry explained about Toby having finished his fortnight of marching drills and lectures, and how he’d been specially selected to train as a fighter pilot. ‘And Julia, he wears a uniform now!’

  ‘He must look divine in that,’ said Julia. ‘What is it about men and uniforms? Even Ant looks debonair in one. And what’s Simon up to?’

  ‘He’s in Leicestershire doing basic training,’ I said.

  ‘Your aunt must miss him, as well,’ said Julia. ‘Wasn’t he practically running her household? And that reminds me – I saw her in Bond Street yesterday and she was very cutting. What on Earth have I done now?’

  ‘She’s probably still furious that Toby’s in love with you,’ Veronica said dryly.

  ‘He’s what?’

  ‘He’s not really,’ Henry said. ‘He only pretended to be, because Aunt Charlotte wanted him to marry that horrible Lady Helena. He told Aunt Charlotte that he was pining away because you were already married, and if he couldn’t marry you, he wouldn’t marry anyone. He’s not actually in love with you.’ Henry peered at Julia, who was almost crying with laughter by this stage. ‘He’s quite fond of you, though,’ Henry hastened to assure Julia.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Julia, dabbing at her eyes. ‘He really might have warned me. Your poor old aunt! She probably thinks I led him on with come-hither stares and slinky, low-cut evening gowns . . . Well, I suppose it’s no use asking you girls to come and live here in my Den of Debauchery now.’

  ‘No, she’d never give us permission,’ I said sadly. I adore Julia’s house.

  ‘And it’s such a waste, all these rooms empty!’ she said. ‘Of course, Mummy wants me to close up the house and move back to Astley, but I couldn’t bear it. She’d have me rolling bandages all day, or knitting balaclavas, or whatever it is the Women’s Institute ladies do down there . . . Henry, darling, would you run downstairs and see if Mrs Timms has made us that pot of tea yet? And there might be some biscuits, too. You could help her carry it all up.’

  Once Henry had bounded off, Julia added, ‘Besides, if I went back to Astley, I’d have to put up with endless lectures from Mummy about how I ought to have a baby to keep me occupied while Ant’s away. She doesn’t seem to realise that might be a bit difficult when he’s off in Scotland – I sometimes wonder whether my poor mother understands the Facts of Life. And as if anyone would want to have a child when we’re at war and no one knows what’s going to happen! So, I really do have to find some sort of job here in London. What do you think I ought to do? I did consider the Wrens or the WAAF, but then, I could get posted anywhere, couldn’t I? And I might not get leave at the same time as Ant, and we’d never see each other. Oh, and that reminds me – you know Lady Bosworth’s daughter, the horsey one? She’s just joined the Mechanised Transport Corps! I ran into her as she was marching out of the recruiting office this morning. I expect she’ll end up a captain or something. Can’t you just see her, ordering people about?’

  ‘Lady Bosworth will be unbearably smug about it,’ said Veronica. ‘Well – more so than usual.’

  ‘Yes, but Veronica, it’s excellent news for us,’ I said, sitting up straighter. ‘Don’t you see? The first thing Lady Bosworth will do now is go round to Aunt Charlotte and brag about how Cynthia is rushing to the aid of her country, carrying on a noble tradition of patriotic service, and so forth. It’s the perfect time for us to tell Aunt Charlotte what we want to do. We’ll just say we can’t bear to allow others to take on all the responsibility for winning the war, and we absolutely must be in London to do our bit. Anyway, typing letters at the War Office is far more ladylike than driving lorries or whatever it is Cynthia’s going to do – it’ll make a secretarial course seem all the more acceptable to Aunt Charlotte.’

  ‘Good thinking, Sophie,’ said Veronica admiringly, as Henry and the housekeeper entered the room with laden trays. ‘I knew you’d come up with something. Still, where are we going to live?’

  ‘Can’t you stay at Montmaray House?’ asked Julia. ‘Oh, thank you, darlings. Scones! And strawberry jam! Mrs Timms, you are a wonder!’

  ‘We did think about that,’ I said, ‘but Montmaray House is far too big for two people. Aunt Charlotte used to call it “camping” whenever she took fewer than a dozen servants with her to stay there. It needs mountains of coal to keep the place above freezing point, and the bedrooms are up four flights of stairs, and the kitchen’s an enormous dark cave.’

  ‘You could stay in the garage flat,’ remarked Henry, licking jam off her thumb.

  ‘What garage flat?’ said Veronica.

  ‘The one at the end of the garden, behind the tennis court. When they turned the old stables into a garage, they built a flat on top for the chauffeur, except Parker never uses it. I saw it once, when I was exploring.’

  SO THIS MORNING, VERONICA AND I went to visit the flat, having wheedled the keys out of Barnes. It consisted of two tiny bedrooms painted a bilious shade of green; a sitting room that overlooked the dingy alley behind the house; a kitchen furnished with a sink, a stove and not much else; and (after we finally managed to shove open its warped door) a small bathroom. The bath was positioned in such a way that one would hit one’s head on the hand basin whenever one leaned over to turn on the bath taps; several tiles had fallen off the walls; and the lavatory chain was broken. The whole flat was icy, and this was on a mild September day – I could only imagine how cold it would be in the middle of winter. No wonder Parker had declined to live there.

  ‘But look, there’s a gas fire in the sitting room,’ said Veronica. We were taking it in turns to point out the advantages of what was, after all, our only option. Even if I convinced Aunt Charlotte to let us stay in London, I couldn’t imagine her
shelling out rent money for a proper flat, and we wouldn’t have any money of our own till we had jobs – and probably not much money then, either. ‘Once the stove’s going,’ added Veronica, leading me back into the kitchen, ‘it will be lovely and warm in here.’

  ‘And we could paint the bedrooms white,’ I said. ‘Then they won’t seem so small. We could borrow some curtains from the house. There are those thick ones in the drawing rooms – they’ll be all right for the blackout if we double them up.’

  ‘It’ll look much better once we’ve brought over some furniture.’

  ‘Two beds,’ I said, ‘a table and chairs, a sofa –’

  A mouse poked its head around the stove at us, made indignant tutting noises, then disappeared.

  ‘And a cat,’ finished Veronica.

  ‘You don’t think there are rats here, do you?’ I asked, staring about fearfully.

  ‘We’ll stop up all the holes,’ she said. ‘It won’t take long, it’s such a little place.’

  ‘Cosy,’ I said.

  ‘Compact,’ agreed Veronica. ‘Makes housekeeping so much easier.’

  ‘Perhaps we ought to clean it up a bit now,’ I said. ‘So that if Aunt Charlotte comes to look at it, she won’t die of horror.’

  But when I tried the kitchen tap, we realised the water had been turned off, as well as the gas and the electricity.

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Veronica. ‘If Aunt Charlotte thought it was good enough for Parker, I don’t see how she could object to us living here.’

  I just looked at Veronica.

  ‘All right, she probably will object, but that just demonstrates what a hypocritical reactionary she is! I think it’s fine. And look, Sophie, there’s even a telephone . . . Oh.’ The cord had been chewed right through. ‘Never mind, we can easily get the telephone company to put in a new one.’

  We took a last look around, dismissing the paint peeling off the sitting room ceiling as a mere bagatelle, then went downstairs to examine the garage. It was empty except for a pile of very old tyres decomposing in a corner, but at the back were some steps leading down to a disused cellar, which Veronica said we could use as a shelter if there were air raids. There were herbs in the kitchen garden, I noticed as we walked back towards the house, and we could plant vegetables in the flower beds. Possibly even keep some chickens . . . I was starting to feel quite excited.

  ‘It’ll be our very own home,’ I said to Veronica. ‘We’ll be able to have things exactly the way we want them. No adults bossing us around.’

  ‘Right,’ said Veronica. ‘All you have to do is convince Aunt Charlotte.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said.

  21st October, 1939

  OF COURSE, IT WAS A SLIGHT problem, talking Aunt Charlotte round, but not an insurmountable one, not once I got Barnes on our side. It certainly helped that the anticipated air raids on London have failed to materialise. However, it’s mostly that Aunt Charlotte thinks we won’t stick at it, that it will all be too difficult and exhausting for us, and we’ll go skulking back to Milford within a fortnight. Then she’ll indulge in a good old gloat and, having regained the moral high ground, force us to do all sorts of awful things: help with mucking out the stables; take the minutes at her interminable WVS meetings; marry the vile nephews of her richest, snobbiest friends. All right, maybe not that last one, but Aunt Charlotte is definitely wrong about us not sticking at it.

  For here I am, sitting in my very own kitchen, basking in the glow of the oven and waiting to see how the pudding I’ve made turns out. And oh, so much has happened since I last had time to write in my journal! Where shall I start?

  Well, first, there’s our lovely flat. Julia was a tremendous help, advising us what colour to paint the bedrooms (a warm dusty pink, to go with the raspberry-striped velvet curtains we appropriated from the Montmaray House library), and showing us how to make our pale blue wallpaper stick to the sitting room walls, and lending us a Turkish carpet, and giving us an old armchair she found in the Caledonian Market, which she’d re-covered herself in dark blue drill. Daniel came over to help us move some furniture from the house, after Aunt Charlotte finally agreed we could take what we needed. None of the four-posters from upstairs would fit in our rooms, so we borrowed two narrow iron-framed beds from the housemaids’ quarters. We also took a sofa that Henry can sleep on when she visits, a pine table for our kitchen, four ladder-backed chairs, a bookshelf, a wireless, an old wooden trunk to keep our spare bed linen and towels in, and a collection of silver cutlery embossed with the FitzOsborne crest (I did look for ordinary cutlery, but there wasn’t any to be found in the house). I didn’t want to take any of the good china – we would be on tenterhooks every time we washed up – so I bought a set of plain white bowls, plates and cups from Woolworths, using most of my allowance for this month. (Aunt Charlotte has grudgingly restored this privilege to us, probably because it would be a bit embarrassing for her if we were seen getting around London dressed in rags and begging passers-by for scraps of food.) We keep a list of things we still need and it never seems to get any shorter, despite our frequent trips up to the house or to Kensington High Street. This morning, I added batteries for torch, soup ladle, hot water bottles and shoe polish. I honestly don’t know how working-class people can ever afford to get married and set up house together. We borrowed most of our stuff and we don’t even have to pay any rent, in return for keeping an eye on Montmaray House. We just have to buy food and pay the gas, electricity and water bills, which won’t arrive for a couple of months, and hopefully we’ll have jobs by then.

  We have quickly settled into our new routine. My alarm clock goes off at a quarter past seven. I put the kettle on, have a wash, make a pot of tea and take a cup back to my room while I get dressed. Then I check to make sure Veronica is up, which she often isn’t, and we have breakfast. After that, we tidy up the kitchen, make our beds, peer out the front door to figure out whether we need umbrellas or heavier coats, gather up our books and papers and special Pitman pens, and walk across Kensington Gardens to our secretarial school. It’s a fairly long walk, but much more enjoyable than being squashed in a bus, except when it’s pouring (in which case, the bus tends to be even more crowded and unpleasant than usual, but still better than getting drenched). Walking also helps save on bus fares – although Veronica has pointed out that we’re probably wearing out our shoe leather at a faster rate, so it may not be much of an economy in the long run.

  Our first class, shorthand, starts at nine o’clock and goes for an hour and a half. It’s very difficult, as though one’s learning a new language. After three weeks, I can only write very short phrases like ‘hit a cat’ and ‘hug a dog’ (which is probably not the sort of thing most secretaries need to write, anyway), and it takes me so long to remember the symbol for each sound that I’d be better off writing it out in English longhand. However, Veronica thinks shorthand is absolutely fascinating – in fact, by the end of the second lesson, she’d worked out a way of doing it more efficiently, but then she made the mistake of telling the teacher about it. Apparently Mr Pitman had already figured out that particular shortcut, but we aren’t supposed to learn about it till Lesson Thirty-Seven. So now the teacher makes sarcastic remarks whenever it’s Veronica’s turn to read out something, and she refers to Veronica very sneeringly as ‘Your Ladyship’ (she doesn’t know we’re actually princesses, of course, because we both enrolled as plain ‘Miss FitzOsborne’).

  I much prefer our typing classes. We pound out drills to the rhythm of a gramophone record in the morning, and after luncheon we learn how to correct carbon copies, and set out a business letter, and that sort of thing. I’m getting very fast with the drills, although sometimes I get into trouble for not using the correct fingers. The teacher for this class is quite nice, except she loathes long fingernails and will occasionally swoop down on a girl and shriek, ‘Talons! Trim them at once!’ She did this to one girl, Suzanne, who happens to have been a debutante with us and was once
very rude about Veronica at a fork luncheon (we overheard her calling Veronica ‘badly groomed’ and ‘unsophisticated’, which Veronica thought was funny, although I didn’t). Suzanne is always boasting about her frocks having been made in Paris and her stockings in America, and she takes out a gold compact and examines her perfectly made-up face about once every ten minutes. Anyway, the teacher made Suzanne file her nails down to a quarter of an inch, right there in class, and Suzanne was still wailing about it five hours later, when we were walking down the steps to go home. Veronica and I looked at each other and snickered and said, ‘Schadenfreude!’ at exactly the same time, and the horrible shorthand teacher, who happened to be passing, gave us a deeply suspicious look, as though we were German spies. Veronica says that the next time Daniel comes to meet us after class, she’s going to make him talk to us in German if that teacher’s anywhere nearby.

  The other students are far friendlier and more interesting than Suzanne. There’s a vicar’s daughter who wants to be a journalist, although her parents think she’s training to be a secretary for a bishop; two sisters who bring in apples to share at luncheon, because their father’s a greengrocer; a girl who was born in India and once toured the Great Pyramids of Egypt on a camel; and a girl who used to dance in the Folies-Bergère and tells the most incredible stories (Aunt Charlotte would die if she heard).

  Our classes finish at four, and we either walk home or take a bus, usually going via the shops with our never-ending shopping list. The newspapers keep talking about food rationing, but that hasn’t started yet, thank Heavens. Deciding what to make for meals is challenging enough as it is. I must admit, we’ve become rather spoiled over the past few years, having someone else to cook for us. But there simply isn’t time to make complicated dinners on days when we have classes, and we don’t have a refrigerator to stop things going bad. Also, we keep realising at the last minute that we’re lacking vital utensils (no colander, for instance, after Veronica has taken the pot of macaroni off the stove) or ingredients (no nutmeg or currants in the cupboard, when I’m halfway through mixing up an apple pudding). So we quite often resort to baked beans or sardines on toast. We listen to the BBC news as we’re washing up, then we practise our shorthand or write letters to Henry, Toby and –