Churchill’s Angels (33 page)

It was quite a happy letter and Daisy was pleased.

Her father told her that he had met Alf Humble at the farmers’ market.

‘He hopes you’ll cycle out to see them, pet. Nancy needs a bit of bolstering too. She loved that lad like he were her own.’

‘I can’t Dad, not yet.’ She did not add that she felt that if she were to go out to Old Manor Farm a ghost would accompany her. It would walk with her up the driveway, sit with her under the shade of a great tree, laugh with her … No, she sent her love and added, ‘Next time.’ She knew the ghost would be there because he was with her now. Sitting wrapped in her sister’s loving arms she had felt the most amazing peace, had looked up and there looking at her were Charlie and Adair, both smiling. That was when she learned that the people we love do not die. They stay alive in the heart for ever. There were no memories of Adair in the flat above the shop, but at the farm … she could not bear them, not yet.

Each day of her leave she helped her mother with housework or with cooking, and she waited until Bernie had brought the mail. But she could not speak even to Bernie, and waited, heart in mouth, at the top of the stair until he carried on with his round. She did force herself to go down to talk to Miss Partridge and to show her the beautiful recovered frock.

It was surprisingly easy to talk to Miss Partridge; Daisy had never appreciated her more.

‘How lovely, Daisy, dear, and how wonderful that there is still honesty in this sad little world of ours. You shall wear it again, won’t you, at some lovely occasion at your next base? How terribly exciting.’ She sighed. ‘I should so love to see you wear it, my dear.’

And so Daisy had hurried back to the flat with the dress and had made a splendid entrance wearing it and, oh, something she had quite forgotten, a pair of silver dancing shoes that Charlie had sworn hurt her feet.

That was when she had taken the silver-framed picture of Charlie out of the drawer and put it proudly on the little mantelpiece in her bedroom. She saw Charlie with her heart; let others see her with their eyes.

Each day life grew brighter. If only the letter about her posting would come.

Flora and Miss Partridge were in the shop a few mornings later when they were surprised to see a Roman Catholic priest walking down the street, obviously looking for a particular number.

‘I’ve never seen this priest before, Flora,’ said Miss Partridge. ‘I thought I knew most of the clergymen in the area. Wonder who he’s looking for. Let’s hope George hasn’t been up to something.’

George and Jake Preston, Daisy had been delighted to see, were doing extremely well at Petrie’s Groceries and Fine Teas where, each day, Flora looked forward to cooking their next meal.

The priest saw them watching his progress and tipped his hat to them as he stopped outside on the pavement. To their surprise he then walked to the shop door and came in.

Flora had no idea how to address a priest and since, in her opinion, High Church Miss Partridge knew all there was to know about religious matters, she urged her forward.

‘Good morning, Father, may we help you?’

‘Good morning,’ said the priest. ‘I am looking for Mrs Petrie, Mrs Flora Petrie.’

‘I’m Mrs Petrie,’ said Flora, ‘but what can I do for you?’ She tried but found that she could not bring herself to address a man young enough to be her son as ‘Father’. This one, too, had a foreign accent, a familiar one, but she could not place it.

The priest took a very creased and crushed envelope out of his pocket and with a smile handed it to Flora. ‘This has taken some time to reach you, Mrs Petrie, and for that I do apologise. Please do read it and then we can talk, yes?’

‘Perhaps you could take Father …?’ Miss Partridge looked questioningly at the priest.

‘Petrungero. Alessandro Petrungero.’

‘Flora, why don’t you go upstairs where you can sit down? I’ll take care of the shop, don’t worry.’

‘Would you like to come up to the flat …? I’ll make tea.’

Flora led the way upstairs and into their rarely used front room.

‘Don’t concern yourself with me, Mrs Petrie. I will sit here and you can read your letter and then ask me whatever you want.’

Father Petrungero sat down in one of the two armchairs and Flora seated herself on the sofa. She looked at the envelope but it told her nothing and again she looked at the priest as if she could not bring herself to hope for happiness.

‘Read your letter, Mrs Petrie. It reached me from a good friend in Switzerland.’

Flora opened the envelope, carefully so as not to damage either the envelope or the paper inside. Her heart leaped with joy as she recognised the handwriting.

Dear Mum, Dad and family,

It’s me, Sam, and I’m safe. I can’t tell you where I’m staying except that I’m in Italy. The people are very kind and took care of me when I got here and never asked for nothing. I will still be fighting and I will work for my keep – this is a poor country and I can’t just take. Trust who brings this to you. There are good people everywhere.

I love you all,

Sam

By the time she had finished reading, tears were streaming down her cheeks. She lifted the letter to her face to try to reread but the words swam before her eyes.

‘Let me make a pot of tea, Mrs Petrie.’

Flora had recovered her composure by the time Father Petrungero had made tea. He found cups and milk, and brought the filled cups into the front room.

‘Very pleasant room, Mrs Petrie. I imagine the family has had some lovely times in here.’

He chatted on about the flat, the street, Dartford and his own home, Rome, and by the time he had finished describing several of Rome’s historic sites, Flora was prepared to ask questions.

‘My Sam’s well?’

‘He says he is.’

‘But you haven’t heard or – ’ she started up from her chair – ‘you haven’t seen him?’

‘No. I am but one of many cogs in a wheel, Mrs Petrie, useful only because I speak English and Italian. The letter came, as I said, from a friend in Switzerland. He received it from his brother in Rome, who received it from someone in the place where your son is hiding.’

‘And where’s that? Oh, please tell me, and tell me how he got to where he is.’

He leaned forward and looked at Flora out of eyes that were too old for his face, eyes that had seen things no one should be made to see. ‘Mrs Petrie, very brave people are caring for your son and for others like him. They have little, but what they have they share. One of them has risked a great deal by starting this letter on its journey across Europe. It is like a chain, one end is here in Dartford, and the other end is wherever Sam is.’

‘It’s dangerous, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he answered simply.

‘Can you tell them we thank them more than we can say?’

He smiled and stood up. ‘They know that. Goodbye for now, Mrs Petrie.’

‘Will I … can he …?’ She stopped, fearful of asking too much.

‘God bless you, and if a letter comes, someone will get it to you.’

She walked with him to the top of the stairs. ‘Don’t come down,’ he said, ‘I know the way.’

‘Thank you, Father.’ She was surprised at how easily the word slipped out now.

Daisy and the priest passed each other in the doorway. He raised his hat to her and, at the same time, she stepped aside to let the clergyman go first. She was taken completely by surprise when she entered the family shop only to see her mother and the very proper Miss Partridge dancing around, narrowly avoiding the barrels of rice and lentils.

‘Well, well,’ laughed Daisy. ‘Lovely footwork, Miss Partridge. Don’t ask me to return your frocks.’

Two middle-aged ladies, feeling decidedly silly, stopped their mad waltz and Flora handed Daisy the letter. ‘Look at that, Daisy Petrie, and tell me if it doesn’t deserve a dance.’

Daisy, who had been walking in the lovely Central Park, took the thin scrap of paper and read it. ‘Oh, Mum, oh, Mum …’ She could say no more.

‘I’m going off to the ARP depot to let your dad see this. Can’t bear for him not to read it until tonight. Will you two look after the shop?’

She took their assent for granted and without even putting on a cardigan, hurried out of the shop. Daisy looked in dismay at Miss Partridge. She had not planned to help in the shop.

‘George will be here soon, Daisy, dear, and, in the meantime, you must face old customers sometime; most of them will be quite in awe of you, you know. Everyone knows you’re a WAAF and everyone knows that you have had flying lessons. You’re quite the celebrity.’

‘I don’t want—’ began Daisy.

‘We very rarely do get what we want out of life, my dear. Now off you go upstairs and make us a nice cup of tea. Father Alessandro made it for Flora but she was too excited to remember me. I’ll hold off the starving masses till you come back down.’

Daisy was laughing as she went upstairs. When had she last laughed? Miss Partridge was funny. How could she possibly have terrorised them, even Sam, as they were growing up? How had they not been able to see her, the real Miss Partridge? ‘I see you now, dear Miss Partridge,’ she whispered, as she put another half-spoon of tea leaves in the pot.

The hour she spent in the shop with Miss Partridge was not a busy one. The vicar came in for his allocation of eggs and assured her that he was there if, at any time, she needed to talk or seek counsel. ‘Did you really have flying lessons, Daisy?’

‘Yes, Vicar, and we flew over the church and I waved to you but, of course, it was daylight and you weren’t guarding the tower.’

‘How exciting, Daisy, dear. I should like to see what this little world of ours looks like from the sky.’

‘You will, Vicar,’ said Miss Partridge, and Daisy held her breath until the vicar laughed and then she joined in.

‘I do hope so, my dear Miss Partridge, I do hope so.’

‘Such a holy man,’ said Miss Partridge when the vicar had left with his two eggs. ‘And surprisingly practical. My own dear father was functioning on a different level from the rest of the family. So impossible to communicate with and, of course, his church would have burned to the ground before he could work out how to use a stirrup pump. That word always makes me smell horses. Don’t know why.’

Daisy, wisely, said nothing and turned round to serve Mrs Roberts, who had come in to see if Daisy was actually working in the shop.

‘You’re looking well, Daisy. And different somehow.’

‘I’m older, Mrs Roberts.’

‘Grown up too fast, lass, like all our young people. I hear you’re in the WAAF and passed your examinations.’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Daisy as she weighed tea leaves on the beautiful brass scales.

‘Never thought I’d say good can sometimes come out of bad, but it’s true. The world will be a different place for women when this war is over. They told me you flew a plane, well, I know that’s not true – men would never allow it – but life’s opening up, isn’t it, lass?’

‘Yes, Mrs Roberts.’

‘Hope you weighed this proper.’ She held up her packet of tea leaves as if testing the weight.

‘Yes, Mrs Roberts.’ Through the wide shop window Daisy was delighted to see her parents walking home, arm in arm. Their son had contacted them. They were happy.

She took Mrs Roberts’s money, gave her the correct change and was ready to whisk back upstairs unless her parents wanted her to stay.

‘I think we’ll take a break when George comes, Miss Partridge,’ said Fred. ‘Our Sam out of Germany, our Daisy home for a holiday. I think a small toast is required.’

Miss Partridge was pleased to help him put up the blackout curtains as young George was not tall enough to handle them.

The letter arrived in the next day’s post.

Fred shouted from the foot of the stairs – it was a busy time and he could not leave the shop – and Daisy almost fell in her haste to get downstairs.

‘Back in a minute, Dad.’

It was from the War Office, and Daisy found that she was almost afraid to open it. Why did it somehow loom larger than other letters she had received?

She sat cross-legged on her white cotton bedspread and opened the envelope. She read the letter and then reread it.

Why?

She read it again. But, no, there was no mistake. She had not been given a new posting. Instead she had been asked to attend an interview, the following week, in London.

Gazing at the neatly typed letter with the cramped, indecipherable handwritten signature told her nothing. Neither did the small, framed picture of Lake Windermere on the wall above her bed help. She looked across at the picture of amazing red autumn leaves on trees in a place called Vermont. She had cut both those pictures out of a
National Geographic Magazine
while she was at school, and usually gazing at their beauty soothed her. She planned to visit both to see for herself if such beauty really existed.

‘Daisy?’

On hearing her father’s voice, she jumped off the bed and hurried downstairs. If she was lucky her mother would be back from the market and she would not have to discuss the letter twice.

There was no sign of Flora.

‘What do you think it means, Dad? Bit cryptic, I think the word is. I’m in the WAAF, I’ve passed all the courses and they’re supposed to say something like Aircraftswoman Petrie is to report at dadada on dadada. A travel warrant is enclosed.’

Fred too examined the letter for hidden meanings. ‘There’s two Daisy Petries in England, common enough name. They’ve sent hers to you and yours to her.’

Daisy wanted to believe that. ‘The letter’s not quite the same as the other one; all that’s the same is the bit about the travel warrant.’

‘Don’t fret, lass. Why don’t you take advantage of your time off and this sunshine and go off on your bike?’

A cycle run would clear her head. She was being stupid. But what if the WAAF was angry with her, if somehow she’d got something wrong when she was at Halton, or, oh God, the top brass has heard about the flying and they’re furious? Too much time this week to think, that was the problem.

‘Good idea, Dad.’

A few minutes later she was cycling through Dartford with no particular destination in mind. Some flowers on the pavement, tall bronze irises, caught her eye as she passed a flower shop and then she knew where she was going.