Octavia's War (17 page)

‘Sweet dreams,' she said, as she and Octavia left him alone in the dishevelled drawing room. ‘See you in the morning.'

Octavia walked up the stairs to her room feeling happily exhausted, glad that her family were together again, even if Johnnie hadn't been able to join them, and pleased that she'd played host to such a very big party and that they'd all had such a good time. Now that she'd stopped dancing she realised that her feet were aching and the first thing she did when she reached her room was to take off her shoes. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and reached for her nightdress under the pillow. I shall sleep like a top after all this, she thought. But she was wrong.

She lay on her back, watching the pin-point stars and the creamy crescent of the moon in the black square of her window, and gave herself up to her thoughts as she waited to drift off. It was such a joy to dance with Tommy again. She couldn't tell him so, naturally, that wouldn't be proper or kind when he'd just lost Elizabeth. But even if she had to keep it secret, it was a joy just the same, to be in his arms again,
breathing in the warm familiar smell of him, smiling at him and talking to him, the way she used to do all those years ago when they were young and in love and nothing else mattered. It made her remember so many good things, as if the years hadn't happened, and it aroused her feelings too, although she certainly couldn't say anything about
that
, not to anyone. I did love him, she thought. I ought to have married him. We were good for one another. Memories danced into her mind, swirling and youthful and pleasurable and she surrendered to them, luxuriating in them, warmed and absorbed.

The moon was still hanging like a milk-white cradle in the square of her window. We change, she thought, but the moon stays the same, always the same and always watching us. The romantic notion rather pleased her. But then her wits returned and she realised that this particular moon had actually changed while she was watching it. When she'd first looked up at it, it had been in the far corner of the window, now it was in the middle. I must have been lying here for hours, she thought, and switched on the bedside light to look at the clock. It was half past four. Good God, she thought. I've been awake all night.

There was no point in lying in bed any longer. She was wide awake and not likely to sleep now. She got up, walked to the window and opened it so that she could lean out. Now she could see that the dawn had begun. The sky beyond the trees was misty pink and the garden shrubs were greening as they emerged from the darkness. It's going to be a fine day, she thought, and wondered how long it would be before the roses bloomed. The last time she'd looked at them they'd been in bud. Now, of course, they were just black shapes in the flowerbeds. She could only just make out the odd leaf, silhouetted against… Then she froze with a sudden horror. There was
somebody walking about in the garden. She could see the dark shape quite clearly. A man, heading for the house.

A burglar, she thought. Well, I'm not having that, and she put on her dressing gown at once while she thought of something large and heavy to defend herself with. There was a cricket bat in the hallstand. Right. That would do. She went downstairs, as quietly as she could, found the bat, took a deep breath, opened the french windows and strode out onto the lawn. The figure was under the willow tree.

‘Stop!' she called. ‘Stop right there!' And marched towards him, bat raised.

‘It's a fair cop, guv!' the figure said, walking towards her with his hands in the air. ‘I give in! Don't hit me!'

For a second she wondered why he was talking such nonsense. It was like something out of some stupid murder mystery. Then she saw who it was.

‘Tommy, you idiot,' she said. ‘I thought you were a burglar. What are you doing in the garden?'

‘Couldn't sleep, old thing,' he said. ‘Too much to think about.'

‘Me too,' she confessed. ‘I've been awake all night.'

He took her hand, slipped it through the crook of his arm and walked them towards the fruit patch at the end of the garden. Almost at his first step a robin began to sing. ‘Just in time for the dawn chorus,' he said. And sure enough, as they walked companionably together along the shadowed path, the chorus began, at first chirruping and carolling, and then weaving extraordinary complications as more and more birds joined in.

They'd reached the fruit patch and the hedge that shielded it from the rest of the garden. They were on their own, hidden and private, in the pearly half light. ‘Do you remember the
first time we heard this?' he asked.

Oh she did. She did. ‘In your flat,' she said. ‘That first summer.'

‘What times they were,' he said. ‘I've been thinking about them all night. Remembering.'

‘Me too,' she said. They had moved from the cheerful language of farce to a sudden intimacy and tenderness that was making it difficult for her to breathe. ‘We were very young,' she said, feeling she ought to make excuses for them.

‘And very happy.'

‘Yes.'

He smiled at her, his grey eyes dawn-dark. ‘Are you happy now?'

She tried to be sensible. ‘At this moment or generally?'

‘Both.'

‘I suppose I'm generally fairly happy,' she told him, avoiding the more personal question. ‘Very happy sometimes. It's a good life. It depends on what's happening.'

He persisted, teasing her. ‘And at this moment?'

It had to be admitted. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘I am. Very happy.' And she offered a deflecting explanation. ‘It was such a good party. I've been thinking about it all night.'

‘It won't wash, Tikki-Tavy,' he said. ‘I'm talking about now. About us. About this moment.'

That old loving nickname gave her heart a palpable tug. How could she refuse him the answer he wanted, even if it wasn't sensible to give it? ‘All right then,' she said, rather grudgingly. ‘I'm happy now.'

He gave a crow of delight. ‘You didn't have to tell me,' he said, beaming at her. ‘It's written all over your face.'

She grimaced. He'd always said he could read her face. ‘Then why did you push me?'

‘I wanted to hear the words,' he said. And he put his arms round her, pulled her towards him, cricket bat and all, and kissed her full on the mouth.

In the reasonable part of her brain she knew she ought to resist, to pull away, to make him stop. But it was such a joy to be kissed by him again, here in the dawn in the quiet of the garden, that she stood where she was, dropped the bat and kissed him back.

‘Darling, darling Tavy,' he said.

Now and a bit late she tried to put up some opposition. ‘We mustn't…' she began.

He put a gentle finger on her lips, his eyes laughing. ‘We have,' he said. ‘My dear, dear Tikki-Tavy. We have.'

‘My feet are soaking wet,' she said, trying to disarm him with practicalities. ‘I think we ought to go back to the house.'

‘We will go wherever you like,' he said, picking up the bat. ‘All you have to do is lead the way.'

Emmeline had woken early that morning too and she and Janet were in the kitchen setting the table for breakfast when Octavia and Tommy came in through the kitchen door.

‘Good heavens above,' she said. ‘Where have you two sprung from? And why have you got that cricket bat? Don't tell me you've been playing cricket because I'll never believe it.'

‘She thought I was a burglar,' Tommy explained. ‘She was going to hit me with it.'

‘Nothing ever surprises me with Tavy,' Emmeline said. Then she noticed how wet Octavia's slippers were. ‘Oh Tavy, for heaven's sake! Look at the state of your slippers. You look as if you've been swimming in them. You'd better get upstairs and get dressed. I don't want you taking cold. I'm afraid I've
only got corn flakes for breakfast, Tommy, but you're welcome to what there is.'

‘Thanks all the same, Em, but no,' Tommy said. ‘It's time I was getting back. I'm expecting a few colleagues this afternoon and I need a change of clothes. Thank you for putting me up – or putting up with me.'

‘Next time bring your pyjamas,' Emmeline said. ‘And your Wellington boots if you're going to wander about in the garden.'

That Sunday was the oddest day. The house was still full of people so there was constant talk and lots of games to play with the children and plenty to do, but Octavia couldn't keep her mind on any of it. Despite admonishing herself most sternly and telling herself that she really must be sensible, her idling mind kept sloping off to relive those few extraordinary moments in the garden. It was barely six months since Elizabeth had been killed and she knew perfectly well how much Tommy had loved her. That had been plain to her every time she'd seen them together. Too plain sometimes. They were a strong, loving couple. Elizabeth had understood him and handled him well. And now this. She knew she should have been shocked by the way they'd been behaving out in the garden. And yet she wasn't. She hadn't been at the time and she wasn't then. It was too good to be true, of course, and probably simply a matter of too much partying and too little sleep, coupled with the effect of dawn and birdsong. But it had happened. It couldn't be denied. It
had
happened. And if she was honest, which she always tried to be, she had to admit that she was glad of it. But what would happen now? Would he just go home and forget it? Or would something more come of it? And did she want it to? She thought and thought, all day
long, returning to her questions like a tongue to an aching tooth, and she was no nearer knowing what she felt or wanted at the end of the day than she'd been at the beginning.

The next morning there was a letter lying beside her plate addressed in his unmistakable handwriting.

Dear Tikki-Tavy
, he said.

I have two tickets for a show on Saturday night. They say it's very good. How about taking time off work for once and coming to see it? I will ring you later and see what you think
.

Give my love to Emmeline and please tell her the party was the highlight of my week.

Yours,

Tommy

She passed it across the table for Emmeline to read. It was innocuous enough for general consumption and she didn't want to appear secretive about it.

Emmeline read it with her toast in one hand and the letter in the other. ‘That's nice,' she said. ‘You'll go, won't you. Bit of time off would do you good.'

So she went, in her prettiest dress and her least-worn coat, with her most respectable hat on her head and the most troubled misgivings in her heart.

Tommy took the Silver Cloud to meet her at Wimbledon station and he'd dressed for the occasion too, as Octavia was quick to notice.

‘Spot on time,' he said, as he strode forward to take her hands and kiss her. A respectable kiss this time but a minor pleasure, brief though it was.

‘This is a lovely car,' she said, relaxing into the passenger seat. ‘I do like a bit of luxury.'

He grinned at her. ‘Me too.'

‘You're lucky to get the petrol for it. I've had to give up driving and take to a bicycle.'

‘Perks of the job,' he said lightly. ‘Ready for the off?'

It was a ridiculous play but sitting beside him in the stalls she enjoyed every silly word of it. Afterwards he took her to supper, which to her ration-restricted palate was almost too rich.

‘How the other half live,' she said, as a rum baba was put before her.

‘You can join the other half whenever you like,' he offered.

‘I most certainly could not,' she told him. ‘I have a socialist soul.'

He grinned at that. ‘That's what I was afraid you'd say. So I suppose you'll refuse to eat your sweet.'

She took the first spoonful at once. ‘That would be stupid,' she said. ‘I can't let good food go to waste.'

‘That's what I love about you, Tikki-Tavy,' he said. ‘Socialist principles and aristocratic tastes.'

Oh, it was a good meal. But they took so long over it that she was afraid she'd miss the last train.

‘You've missed it already,' he said, stirring his coffee. ‘That's all catered for.'

She could hardly misunderstand him. But then she didn't want to misunderstand him. ‘You've had this all planned from the beginning, haven't you?'

‘Tools of my trade, old thing,' he said, grinning at her. ‘Diplomacy is eighty per cent planning.'

‘I would have said it was eighty per cent artfulness.'

‘There's that too.'

‘So where are we going now?'

‘Home,' he said.

He drove her to Parkside Avenue and, while she was rummaging through her bag for the key and thinking what a long time it had been since she'd last used it, he took a hamper from the boot.

She laughed. ‘Not more food, surely?'

‘This is breakfast,' he said, carrying it into the kitchen. ‘Mrs Dunnaway made it up for me.' And when she made a face at him, ‘It's all right. She thinks I'm staying with friends.'

She put her hands flat on the kitchen table and took a preparatory breath. It was time to make their position clear. They had to be sensible. ‘Now look,' she said. ‘It's no good thinking we can just pick up where we left off. We've got to be sensible about this. We can't just… We have positions to think of…'

He put his hand under her chin, lifted her head and kissed her long and passionately. ‘My dear, darling, ridiculous Tavy,' he said. ‘Come to bed.'

Octavia stayed in Wimbledon until five o'clock that Sunday afternoon and she only went back to Woking then because she didn't want to upset Emmeline by being late for dinner.

Tommy couldn't see that there was a problem. ‘Phone her,' he said. ‘Tell her you're staying here and I'm going to feed you. There's no need for you to rush off. I'm sure she wouldn't mind.'

‘She would,' Octavia told him. ‘She'd mind very much. I'd never hear the end of it. It's the most important meal of the week. Our one and only roast. And she's cooking it all herself tonight because Janet's gone to see her family. Don't make that face. It's all very well for you. You can eat roast meat whenever you like. You only have to book a table at one of your restaurants. We have to exist on our rations.'

‘All right,' he said easily. ‘Point taken. I think you're making more of it than she would but if that's the way you feel…'

The two of them were strolling in the garden arm in arm. It was peaceful there and, although it was woefully overgrown, there were still fish in the pond and flowers among the weeds and the rose arch was heavy with blossom. ‘I don't want to leave you,' she said. ‘You know that. But I must play fair.'

‘You and your passion for justice,' he teased. ‘So when am
I going to see you again?'

‘Soon,' she said vaguely, stopping to weave a trailing shoot into the arch.

He took her hands away from the roses and held them, turning her so that they were face to face. ‘This is important, Tavy.'

She felt chastened. ‘I know it is,' she said. ‘But it's complicated. You've got a high-powered job to do. I've got a school to run. We can't just take off whenever we feel like it.'

His face was stubborn. ‘Yes we can.'

‘Be reasonable, Tommy,' she said. ‘We've got responsibilities.'

He gave her imprisoned hands an exasperated shake. ‘Now look,' he said. ‘We've been given a second chance, which is a damned sight more than we deserved, and I'm damned if I'm going to let it go. We're not young any more and there's a war on and nobody knows what will happen next. OK, we're not going to be invaded. We've escaped that. But everything else is uncertain. I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I don't want to waste a minute of it. When you're offered a second chance you grab it with both hands. Or you do if you've got any sense. I thought you felt the same way.'

Did she? She wasn't sure. Last night in the privacy of her bedroom in her empty house, she would have said yes without even stopping to think about it. But that was last night. It was wonderful to be back with him, wonderful to be loved by him, but here, in the garden, in the clear light of day, she had to face the fact that she wasn't a free agent. The school had to be run. There were people depending on her.

‘Don't you?' he insisted. ‘I seem to remember you saying you loved me.'

‘I do love you,' she said honestly. ‘I've always loved you. Right from the very beginning. You know that.'

‘Very well then,' he said, lifting her hand and kissing her
fingers. ‘Prove it. Tell me I can come down and see you on Wednesday.'

‘Yes, of course you can.'

‘And stay the night?'

She frowned and pulled her hand away from him. ‘That's the problem,' she said, continuing her walk.

‘Only if we allow it to be,' he said walking beside her.

She slipped her hand through his elbow and turned to look at him as they walked, her face an entreaty. ‘We must be sensible, Tommy. If Em were to find out we were lovers she'd be mortified. She's a very conventional woman.'

‘Then we must show her how stupid the conventions are.'

It was time to talk about the one thing neither of them had mentioned. ‘It's only six months since Elizabeth was killed,' she said. ‘I think most people would be shocked to know you'd started a love affair so soon. There are
some
proprieties.'

They'd reached the garden seat which looked decidedly grubby. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and dusted it down, quickly and with irritable determination.

‘For a start it's nearly seven months,' he said, as they sat down, ‘but we'll let that pass. What's important for you to understand is that our marriage wasn't a love affair in the accepted sense.'

‘Oh, come now,' Octavia said. ‘I've seen you together too many times to let you get away with that. It was a very good marriage. You're surely not going to deny her that, poor woman. That's shabby.'

‘No, I'm not,' he said. ‘It was a very good marriage. You're right. She was a wonderful wife, superb at parties, ran the house like clockwork, looked after the children – and me too, sometimes – a good companion. There's no denying any of that. I was very fond of her and she of me, but it wasn't a love
affair. Not the way it was with you. The way it can be again if you want it to be.'

‘That sounds like emotional blackmail to me,' she said in her direct way. ‘Am I supposed to be pleased to hear you say such things?'

‘No,' he said, ‘that's not why I'm telling you.' It wasn't entirely true. He
had
hoped to please her. In fact he'd
expected
to please her. ‘I just wanted you to know how things really were. You always said we had to be honest with one another.'

‘True,' she said, ‘but not to the detriment of someone else's character. It's no good, Tommy. You can say what you like but it won't make a ha'p'orth of difference. If we make our affair public the people who know us will be upset. They're bound to be. We must take our time over this and be discreet.'

‘How long for?'

‘Another eight months, at least. Possibly more.'

‘That's the trouble with you,' he said. ‘You're always so bloody direct.'

She laughed at that. ‘And you want to spend the rest of your life with me?'

‘Yes. I do. God help me!'

‘And marry me?'

‘That too. Naturally. I thought I'd made that clear years ago.'

Her smile was rueful, for all this was true and couldn't be denied. ‘I wouldn't be the sort of wife you want.'

‘I don't want a sort of wife,' he said. ‘I want you. Always have.'

It was such a perfect answer it made her want to cry. She controlled herself by turning her sympathy to someone else. It was an old well-tried trick. ‘But you married Elizabeth.'

‘It seemed the right thing to do at the time,' he told her,
and he was rueful too. ‘She was there, she was suitable, she loved me. I thought we could make a go of it. And we did in our own way. Everyone thought we were the perfect pair. And it was terrible when she was killed. Terrible.' He turned his head away from her, irritated by the turn their conversation had taken. ‘Look, do we have to talk about all this?'

She felt so sorry for him and cross with herself for having pushed him into a memory that hurt him so much. ‘Not if you don't want to,' she said.

‘Well, I don't. I want to talk about us. About when we're going to see one another again.'

‘Wednesday,' she said. ‘You can sleep in the dressing room. I'll get Em to make you up a bed there. It'll only be a camp bed and it'll be very uncomfortable but you won't have to stay in it. Not for long anyway. It'll only be a token. Just to keep up the proprieties. You can come in and join me when the house is quiet.'

‘Now that's more like it,' he said. ‘I thought you were going to hold me at arm's length.'

‘Perhaps you don't know me as well as you thought.'

‘Obviously not,' he said, putting his arms round her. ‘I'm glad to say.'

Lizzie was rather surprised to get a letter from her father to say that he was coming down to see her in the middle of the week.

‘Unheard of,' she said to Poppy. ‘I mean, when have you ever known him to come down on a Wednesday?'

Poppy was sitting in the window seat angling her compact mirror to catch the light as she applied a necessary coating of Max Factor to her face. They were off to the pictures in half an hour and she did so want to cover up her spots. They looked
perfectly frightful that evening. ‘Maybe he's lonely,' she said. ‘I mean, after your mother and everything.'

That was a novel idea to Lizzie Meriton. It had never occurred to her that her father could suffer from anything as mundane as loneliness. ‘I can't see why he should be,' she said. ‘He's got heaps of friends. Our house was always full of them, drinking cocktails and going haw-haw-haw all the time and telling me how I'd grown.' Even the memory of it made her shudder.

‘It was only a thought,' Poppy said and gave her friend an apologetic grin.

‘No, no,' Lizzie said, accepting the apology and shamed into being a bit more gracious. ‘You could be right. I just wish it wasn't Wednesday, that's all. I shall have to miss choir practice. Still if he's lonely, poor old thing…'

‘Wednesday?' Emmeline said. ‘This Wednesday do you mean?'

‘That's what he says,' Octavia told her, as calmly as she could. ‘He's coming to see Lizzie and he'd like to stay over and take us all to dinner.'

‘But he was only here last Saturday,' Emmeline said. ‘I thought he saw her then? What's up with the man?'

‘I expect he's lonely, Ma,' Edith said. ‘All on his own in that great house. Where's he going to take us, Aunt? Does he say?' The thought of having a meal in a restaurant was making her mouth water. If there was one thing Tommy Meriton really did know about, it was food. ‘Don't make that face, Ma. Think of the fun we'll have and all the lovely things we'll eat.'

Thank God for Edie, Octavia thought, smiling at her.

‘Well, I don't know,' Emmeline grumbled on. ‘Where's he going to sleep? Have you thought of that? I can't keep putting him on the sofa.'

‘We could bring one of the camp beds down and put it in the dressing room,' Octavia said, trying to sound as though she'd just thought of it. ‘It wouldn't be wonderful, I'll grant you that, but at least it would be more private than the drawing room.'

‘Well, I don't know,' Emmeline said again. ‘I'll think about it.'

It was a successful evening, despite Octavia's misgivings. Tommy was an excellent host, and wined and dined them so well that Edie said she hadn't eaten so much for weeks and even Emmeline admitted that it was a very good meal. ‘The steak pie was just right,' she said. ‘Done to a turn. Just the way I like it.'

What a difference a bit of luxury makes, Octavia thought, and gave Tommy a grin when no one was looking.

When the house was quiet he tiptoed into her bedroom and stretched himself out in her bed with a sigh of relief. ‘Bloody camp bed,' he said. ‘It's like being on the rack.'

‘Whisper,' she whispered to him, and quoted the latest slogan. ‘Walls have ears.'

‘I
must
love you to put up with this sort of caper,' he whispered. ‘I hope you appreciate it.'

‘You are nobility itself,' she teased him.

‘Can you be noble and carnal at the same time?'

‘Let's see,' she said. Oh, it was so good to be together again.

It wasn't quite so good the next morning when she woke up feeling distinctly jaded. Tommy was already in the bathroom, singing tunelessly. Where does he get his energy from? But she lay where she was for another fifteen minutes, wishing she could stay in bed all day, and when she finally bestirred herself
and sat at the dressing table to brush the tangles from her hair, she was appalled by the weary face that stared back at her from the mirror. This is going to take a bit of getting used to, she thought. I hope it's a quiet day at school on Monday.

It wasn't. Naturally. But it began with a happy announcement. She'd only just walked into her study at Downview when Helen Staples arrived, breathless and rosy, to say she had some rather good news.

‘Have you got time?' she asked hopefully. ‘I'll come back later if it's difficult.'

‘Come in,' Octavia said. ‘I've always got time for good news.'

‘Well, I say rather good news,' Helen said, blushing. ‘Actually it's very good news, only I suppose that depends on the way you look at it. Very good for me I ought to say. Anyway I've come straight to tell you because I thought you ought to be the first to hear it. I'm engaged to be married.'

Octavia knew what it was without being told. One look at Helen's glowing face and the splendid sheen of her hair would have been enough, even if she hadn't caught the flash of a diamond on her finger. ‘My dear,' she said. ‘That's wonderful. I'm so happy for you. When will the wedding be?'

‘Soon,' Helen said. ‘Well, very soon actually. He's off back to sea in a week or two and he wants it to be on his next leave.'

‘So I suppose this means you'll be handing in your notice.'

‘I'm afraid so,' Helen said. ‘That's the one sad thing about it.' But she was so happy she was beaming and didn't look sad at all.

‘And where will you be living?'

‘Portsmouth.'

‘A sailor's wife,' Octavia said.

‘A second lieutenant's wife,' Helen said, with obvious pride.

‘You must look after him,' Octavia told her. ‘Our sailors are valuable.'

‘Oh, I shall.'

There was a knock at the door and Maggie Henry arrived. ‘Sorry to trouble you, Miss Smith,' she said, ‘but we've got a problem. I'll call back, shall I?'

‘No,' Octavia said. ‘I think we've finished for the moment, haven't we, Helen. We can talk again later.'

The problem was two cases of chicken pox and would necessitate the creation of an isolation ward so that the invalids could have some peace from the rush of the dormitories and the other girls could be protected from taking the infection. It took the best part of the morning to arrange it and by the time the doctor called and the change-over was prepared for, they had a third case and a girl whom Maggie said ‘looked suspicious'.