The Penny Bangle (28 page)

‘Listen, Steve,’ said Cassie carefully. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you. You’re my friend, and I don’t hurt my friends. But, friend or not, you don’t have any right to maul me.’

‘Jesus, I was only going to kiss you!’

‘I don’t
want
you to kiss me!’ Cassie pulled her jacket straight. ‘Stephen, you forget I’m not a lady,’ she continued, walking on. ‘You do anything like that again, and it’ll hurt much more. You understand me?’

‘Yes, I understand you.’ Stephen shook his head as if to clear it, and suddenly he seemed to sober up. ‘I’m sorry, Cass,’ he said.

‘That’s all right, forget it ever happened,’ murmured Cassie.

‘But I wouldn’t have thought that Robert and I were very different?’ Stephen fell into step with Cassie, ambling along, matching his walk to her much shorter stride. ‘
You
can’t always tell the difference, can you?’ he persisted. ‘There was that time at Daze’s place, remember? When you thought I was Rob? We’re practically identical in looks, you must admit, and we must sound the same.’

‘But, Stephen, you’re
not
Robert!’ Cassie didn’t want to hurt him, knew it must be worse for him, because while she was hoping for the best, Stephen had convinced himself that Robert must be dead. But Robert was the one she loved, and she couldn’t transfer this love from Robert to his twin.

‘I know what it is – I’m not a hero.’ Stephen was kicking at the bits of rubble which were lying everywhere. ‘Rob was out in Italy, killing Germans. I’m a head-case, stuck behind a desk. Cassie, you’re like all the rest of them. You think a man who isn’t shooting people is not a man at all.’

‘Oh, God, it isn’t that!’ Cassie would have hugged him, tried to soothe him. But she didn’t dare, because he might have thought she’d changed her mind about the kiss.

‘What is it, then?’ he growled.

‘Yes, all right, you’re twins,’ said Cassie. ‘Yes, you look the same. But you’re individuals, with different ways of thinking, different ways of talking – everything! Steve, I’m fond of you – you know I am. But I love your brother. What don’t you understand?’

‘My brother’s dead.’

‘So you keep saying.’

‘Cassie, you can’t mean to stay in love with somebody who’s dead?’

‘I – oh God, I don’t know what I mean!’ Cassie was aware of Stephen’s closeness, and her body was responding, even though her mind was quite determined to keep him at arm’s length.

She bit her lower lip, afraid she’d start to cry. ‘If you’d been the one in Italy, and he’d been here in London, it would have made no difference,’ she insisted. ‘Robert would still have been the one I loved. Please, Steve, could we be friends?’

‘No more than friends?’

‘Yes!’ cried Cassie, desperately.

‘Oh, all right, then.’ Stephen’s laugh was bitter. ‘Okay, Cassie sweetheart, we’ll be friends. I’m sorry I made a pass at you just now. I misinterpreted the signs. I’m rather drunk tonight.’

But, as they made their way towards Park Lane, Cassie was aware of feeling warm, aroused, excited. Stephen hadn’t got it wrong. If he hadn’t been so drunk, if he hadn’t smelled like a distillery, it would have been so easy to be held in Stephen’s arms. It would have been so nice to kiss him.

More than kiss him.

In spite of what she’d said to Stephen, he and Robert weren’t so very different, and Stephen was a very attractive man.

As the weeks went by and there was still no news of Robert, Cassie started to agree with Stephen – Robert must be dead.

She blamed herself. She was a wicked person. She hadn’t been inside a Catholic church for months, for years. She hadn’t spoken to the Catholic chaplain. She hadn’t answered Father Riley’s letters.

But how could she, when she knew he wanted her to tell him she was going to church and to confession, and that she was mindful of everything he’d taught her when she was a little girl, that she was staying pure?

She still went to church parade, of course. She went inside the church. She hadn’t travelled so far along the road which led to hell that she was like the atheists, who were obliged to stand out in the rain.

But she went to Church of England services, along with all the other heretics, and so it didn’t count. She had been committing fornication, which was a mortal sin. She had allowed herself to feel attracted to her lover’s brother. She was a scarlet woman, a corrupter of mankind.

So God had taken Robert, and it served her right.

But, a little later, she began to feel annoyed with God. Then she was cross, then downright livid. She finally decided that if God had taken Robert just to punish Cassie, God wasn’t worth believing in, and so she jolly wouldn’t, any more.

She took the holy medals from round her neck, and threw the whole lot in the bin. Then, remembering they were made of metal, she fished them out again, and put them in the box for salvage. They could be useful, she decided, made into bits of bombs.

In any case – Lily or Father Riley would very soon be sending her some more.

‘But isn’t he still seeing some girl from Shropshire?’ Frances asked, when Cassie wrote and told her what had happened.

‘I don’t know,’ wrote Cassie. ‘I’m worried about Steve. Robert being missing is upsetting him, of course. But he’s also fretting because he thinks he’s not a hero. He seems to feel that if he’d been in Africa or Italy, killing people, I would want to kiss him.’

‘Men are dim,’ wrote Frances. ‘Simon’s very clever at masterminding transport and ordering supplies. But if I’ve explained just once that I can’t sleep with him until he gets divorced from Caroline and marries me, I’ve explained a hundred thousand times. He seems to think I’ll change my mind if he can only get me tight on gin.’

‘But don’t you want to sleep with him?’ wrote Cassie.

‘God, yes – more than anything,’ wrote Frances. Cassie could almost hear her wistful sigh. ‘But I don’t want to have an illegitimate baby. Mummy would be livid. She’d throw me and the baby out into the street. We’d have to beg for bread.’

Chapter Fifteen

Cassie had never quite got round to telling Lily Taylor she was engaged to Robert, and now she was glad. If his twin was right, and Robert was really dead, there would have been no point.

Now, if Lily heard about a missing or a dead fiancé, it would only make her start to cry. Then it would get her going on the wickedness of the world, particularly the wickedness of men, warmongers all – except for Father Riley, naturally, for he could do no wrong.

Lily’s most recent letter had been full of awful news. Over the past few weeks the tannery, the railway goods sheds and a whole row of shops had all been bombed. Jerry was trying to hit the Spitfire factory at Castle Bromwich, Lily thought, but that was several miles away.

Their own street was a mess, with broken pavements, fractured water mains, and burnt and twisted cables everywhere. On Lily’s side of Redland Street, only Lily’s house and Mrs Flynn’s next door were still unscathed. Across the way, only nineteen houses out of fifty-odd were still inhabitable.

Poor Mr Mallory at number 27 had had his windows broken and half his roof blown off, but he was refusing to go and live with his daughter in Halesowen. He’d lived in Smethwick all his life, he said, and he’d be dying there.

‘The same goes for me, love,’ Lily wrote, as Cassie shook and shuddered and worried about her granny being exposed to all this danger, knowing she couldn’t do a thing about it, that Lily would never move from Birmingham. ‘I couldn’t leave your mother all alone, in any case.’

She meant she had to make her weekly visits to the graveyard, to tidy up the gravel and have a little chat with Geraldine, who Lily knew was listening to every word she said.

There was the shrine, as well. She seemed to be convinced that if she kept the shrine as holy and immaculate as she had always kept it, if she got Father Riley round to sprinkle holy water every other month or so, God wouldn’t let the Germans bomb her home.

‘I hope you go to church and say your prayers,’ continued Lily. ‘Father Riley tells me London has some lovely churches. There are Catholic missions to servicewomen, too. He’s going to write to you and give you some addresses of nice Catholic families in London. He’ll write to them as well, telling them to expect to see you soon.’

Cassie pulled a face.

Frances wrote long screeds from Chester, saying how happy she was with darling Simon, and how she hoped that things would all work out, even if it might take several years.

Simon said that Caroline would probably hold out for several mints of money. So if he and Frances ever married, they would be very poor. But Frances wasn’t worried. She could always work and earn a living. If her parents didn’t like it, that was just too bad.

‘I’ve talked to Mummy and Daddy,’
she went on,
‘and to my surprise, they don’t seem too bothered about me seeing Simon, even though he’s married.

‘Of course, my mother said, she’d always thought that nobody would ever want a great, fat lump like me.

‘Simon is apparently one of the Cheshire Helstons, and he’s related to a baronet. But he didn’t tell me. Mummy got a friend to make enquiries. I don’t care if Simon is related to this Sir William person, or to Mickey Mouse. But, if it makes my mother happy to believe that one day I might marry into the minor aristocracy, it will make life easier for me.’

Cassie was busy working in the motor pool that morning, and now she folded up the letters and put them in the pocket of her grease-stained overall.

God, she thought, as she picked up her spanner, poor old Frances, that mother of hers is such a nasty bitch. I’d tell her to go and take a running jump if she were mine.

Yellow, gaunt and scrawny, with a pinched and puckered face that seemed to have no lips or eyebrows, Lady Ashford must be jealous of her daughter’s beauty. There was no other reason for her to be so mean. Frances might have been a podgy child but, since she had met Cassie, she had always been attractive, in a statuesque, impressive way.

These days, she looked lovely. Being in the army had given her some much-needed confidence. Drill had made her stand up straight and tall. She was well-covered, yes – but nobody except her evil mother would have said that she was fat. Her skin was like fresh cream, and her dark hair shone in natural waves.

Most men would look at Frances and think she was some sort of heavenly vision.

Robert blinked, opened his eyes, and saw a heavenly vision.

The slender woman who was sitting by the bed, and sewing something white, looked like a Renaissance painting of the Virgin Mary. She was in her late twenties, he supposed. Or maybe early thirties. Older than him, he thought – but beautiful.

She wore a summer dress of pale blue cotton, which flattered her complexion. The fine material looked almost glowing against her soft brown milky-coffee skin. She had dark hair the colour of damsons, carelessly tied back with yellow ribbon. She had a rather long, straight nose, and he could see faint crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.

He couldn’t decide if she was real or not, and so he coughed politely, to make her look at him.

She dropped her sewing. She stared straight at him, startled. ‘So you’re awake at last,’ she whispered. ‘Please, don’t scream or shout,’ she added urgently, covering his mouth with her left hand.

‘I shan’t scream, I promise,’ mumbled Robert, who didn’t think he could have screamed or shouted, even if he’d tried.

So the woman took her hand away.

Robert tried to move, to lift one hand, to ease the cramp in his right leg. But, to his dismay, he found he couldn’t do it. He had no strength at all. He struggled to sit up against his pillows, but he failed, and lay back, gasping.

Then he felt someone help him to sit up, and turned to see a little grey-haired woman dressed in black, who nodded and smiled at him, but didn’t speak.

‘What am I doing here?’ he asked the women. ‘Why am I in this bed?’

‘We found you on our land,’ the younger woman told him. ‘There are some German gun emplacements half a mile away. We heard they had been sabotaged. So we’ve been assuming you and your companions were the ones who’d blown them up.’

The woman looked at Robert with concern. ‘At first, we thought you must be dead. You’d lost an awful lot of blood. But then we realised you were just unconscious, and so we brought you here.’