The Storms of War (39 page)

‘Nuns?’ The younger of the two men dropped his hand from Jemima’s thigh.

‘That is correct. We are about to dedicate our lives to God. My friend here has great high spirits at the thought. She was a little overexcited. I do apologise, gentlemen.’

The men were scrambling to their feet. ‘No, no, miss, no need to apologise,’ one was saying. ‘Don’t give it a second’s thought. An honour to meet you ladies. We must go.’

The younger one looked at Celia. ‘Tell the boss up there I didn’t mean to call you muggers. Hope he won’t hold it against me.’

‘Oh I am sure not,’ she said, quite as sweet as Jemima. ‘God is all forgiveness. And we are all sinners.’

‘Yes, miss. We must be going. Give our regards to him upstairs.’

Celia watched them hurry off. ‘Come,’ she said to Jemima. ‘We must get back to the flat.’

‘That man was following you?’

‘He was.’

‘Oh, God. When did he start?’

‘Somewhere after Paddington.’

‘Has he definitely gone?’

‘I can’t tell.’

‘Let’s run.’ Jemima seized her hand and they set off, bags bumping against their waists. They looked behind them all the way home. Celia was startled by the shadows, jumped when she saw an animal. Her heart was full of fear.

‘Emmeline!’ she cried, coming into the flat the next evening. The day of driving had been a long one. She wanted to prop open her eyes with matchsticks.

‘I’m in the bedroom.’ Emmeline was crouched down by the bed, packing up boxes with scarves.

Celia sat on the bed. ‘I’ve had a letter from Mama.’

‘What’s happened now?’ Emmeline barely looked up.

‘Lady Redroad wants to make Stoneythorpe into a hospital. Mama says that if she does, she wants us to go back and help.’

‘Mama couldn’t oversee a hospital, even at Stoneythorpe.’ Emmeline disentangled a mass of grey wool from a black scarf.

‘No, I think Lady Redroad would be doing all that sort of thing. Anyway, I think it would be more a place for men to get better than have operations. But it would be good for Mama, don’t you think?’

‘Of course! Lady Redroad should use her own house, though.’ Emmeline looked up briefly, her handsome eyes smaller than usual, the edges bloodshot with tiredness.

‘I think there’s some reason why, Mama says. Not suitable. Too big.’

Emmeline threw a green scarf into the box and laughed. ‘Samuel would say she wants us to bear all the costs while she gets the glory.’

‘True. But it
would
be good for Mama. And she would be useful. After all, she did run a whole house once.’ Celia leant down and pushed a knitted hat into the box.

‘Once. I think it’s a good idea, especially if Lady Redroad is doing all the work. But I won’t go back.’

‘Don’t you think you should?’ Celia watched her sister close the box, move it to the side and take out another one.

‘Let’s see if it really happens first. Anyway, you can go.’ Emmeline’s smile was so innocent it made Celia think of the old days, when she was about to marry Sir Hugh. ‘My work here is more important.’

‘But they’re following you. They followed us.’ In a second, she was back there, heart thumping with fear, hurrying down the street, all blackness.

‘Everybody is followed in London.’

Celia watched Emmeline pack more scarves, her hands working neatly. She tried to imagine Stoneythorpe as a hospital, the
dining room full of wounded soldiers, doctors and nurses bustling through the corridors. Instead what came to her was an image of her mother, locked in her room, lying in bed, back turned when Celia peered through the keyhole, bumping through the corridor at night. She could not imagine Verena inviting Lady Redroad to set up a hospital there.

‘You and Jemima can take these tonight,’ said Emmeline, breaking into her thoughts.

‘I can’t! Not tonight! Last night was too much. I am too tired.’ All she wanted to do was lie down and sleep for ever on the sofa.

‘Tomorrow night, then. We must do it!’ Emmeline clapped down the lid of the box like a full stop.

Celia sat at the table and wrote to Verena.
When you begin to make the house a hospital, I will come.
Stoneythorpe, turreted, ivy-clad, was pulling her back, and who knew if that was only to wander around the corridors and read
Mansfield Park
aloud, while the possibility of the hospital was endlessly discussed, never happening. She tried to throw aside the picture of it as it was now – dull, deserted, dust settled on every surface – replace it with the time before the war, the whole place quivering with bustle and anticipation, readying itself for the descent of the children and the party. But she couldn’t see how it could ever be like that again. Verena’s need for them had echoed through every word in her letter, but Celia was fighting it away. She folded up the letter for posting, feeling ashamed of herself. To try to make herself feel better, she wrote to Tom, telling him about the weather and her driving job. She only felt sadder at the end of it because she knew he wouldn’t reply.

As the weather improved, the bombs got worse. The newspapers said that the Kaiser was aiming to knock London down (although avoiding Buckingham Palace, so as not to hit his relations). ‘Don’t think about it,’ said Jemima. ‘You can’t let them know you’re afraid.’ But Celia couldn’t help it, craned up out of Emmeline’s window to look for the fat silver body of a Zepp, kept her eyes on the floor when they went out delivering at night. Bombs fell on Chelsea
Hospital, Pancras Road, the Strand, the Royal Academy, St Paul’s and the Bedford Hotel, not far from them. The Sphinx on Victoria Embankment stayed upright, propped on rubble. The street lights were wrapped in brown paper and Emmeline was reported for showing a crack of light from her house. Even Captain Russell was jittery, told her to drive fast at the end of the day. She begged Mr Janus and Emmeline to come to Russell Square tube for the night, but they refused. ‘Government propaganda,’ Mr Janus said. ‘Trying to scare us.’ Emmeline nodded. ‘Anyway, if a bomb hit the tube and it fell in, we’d be much worse off. And there are rats down there. Big ones. You can go if you like.’

‘I won’t leave you,’ said Celia. Instead, every night, she lay in bed, waiting for the sound of the policeman ringing his bell, the distant fire of anti-aircraft guns, the baby-like shriek of a shell falling somewhere near. She longed for winter, when Mr Sparks said they’d probably stop.

After six nights of bombing in September, the planes came less. Emmeline stepped up her demands, asking Celia to deliver larger and larger parcels. Celia refused. Emmeline accused her of mooning after Tom. Celia told her the truth. Number One War Hospital had sent back her last letter, said that Tom had been sent out to France again and they couldn’t forward post. Sometimes, at night, she decided she could hear the guns resounding in France, imagined Tom lying in a shell hole, coughing. The thought of offering herself to him raked through her and tears ran down her face.

‘I can’t,’ said Celia, thinking of Tom, Captain Russell, the general. ‘I just can’t do this for you.’

‘Excuses,’ said her sister. ‘Think of these poor men.’

Eventually, Celia agreed, hiding the parcels under coats in the back of the car. Then, finally, when Jemima and Rufus were at the flat, they told her that she had a new task.

‘You must help us take people. We need men to be moved around.’

‘How on earth can I do that?’

‘You will drive them,’ said Mr Janus, smoothly. ‘You will put them in the boot of your car when Captain Russell is in the front, and you will drive them.’

Celia looked at him in horror. ‘What are you saying? That’s completely impossible! How can I do something like that?’

‘We need you to do it,’ Jemima said. ‘Without you, these men will die. They will go to prison and they will die. They will have everything taken from them, their clothes, everything. You know, one of them told me that if you are not what they deem “cooperative” in prison, you even have the privilege of a bed taken from you. Your arms are tied to the wall, splayed, and you have to hang there. Whenever they come in, they beat you.’

‘I know, I know, it is terrible. But I cannot put men in the car. Captain Russell will check. I am supposed to inspect it for bombs every day. Sometimes he checks under it too. What if he decided to look in the boot?’

‘Well, you’d have to put him off.’

Celia felt tears behind her eyes. ‘Why can’t you do these things? Why does it have to be me?’

‘Because you are the one no one would ever suspect,’ said Mr Janus.

‘That’s not true,’ she said. ‘I told Emmeline. A general in the ambulance station said he’d watched me.’

‘Oh yes, I heard. Idle threats.’

She stared at him, her old tutor. ‘Please.’

‘You drove through battlefields and you can’t do this?’

‘It’s because of the battlefields that I can’t. Don’t you see?’

She tried to catch Jemima’s eye, but the other woman looked away.

Mr Janus shook his head. ‘We need you. But perhaps if you can’t do this small thing for us, then there’s no room for you here.’

‘Samuel.’ Emmeline put her hand on his arm.

He paid no attention to her. ‘I mean it, Celia. You might have to find somewhere else.’

‘Hey!’ A voice behind her. ‘Hey there.’ Celia was used to men’s voices calling her in the street. She made a play of looking down and carried on walking. It was mid-afternoon in Leicester Square, late November and already growing dark. Captain Russell had told her to drop him at Westminster and leave the car behind. She’d decided to walk the long way home. Ever since she had told Emmeline that she would not transport men in her car, her sister and Mr Janus had been furious with her. Most nights they barely spoke.

‘Miss!’ She pretended to be studying the billboards as she walked, identical groups of beautiful women waving their men off to war. There was the sound of footsteps running behind her, then a hand on her shoulder. ‘Miss de Witt!’

She turned. She barely recognised the man, tanned and tall, blond-haired, handsome, a little faded, thick coat over his khaki uniform. ‘It’s me, Celia,’ he said. ‘Jonathan.’

She stared. ‘Why … so it is.’ He was holding out his hand. She took it, tentatively. ‘You look so different,’ she said. His face had widened somehow, his eyes become brighter blue. His hair was cut short, like a soldier’s. Most of all, he had grown older, she thought, thinner, his cheeks more sunken.

‘I guess we all do. You have grown up, Cel— I mean, Miss de Witt.’

She blushed. ‘The war.’ Around them, people were hurrying, men and women, nurses in uniform, groups of workers, mothers, men in suits. They stood still. She reminded herself that if she thought him terribly changed, she must be more so, much older, creases around her eyes, her hair a darker blonde, the strands so fragile that they looked like they would snap if you touched them.
His words in her head.
Not my style of broad. Little German fräulein.
Well, he wouldn’t think like that any longer.

‘You are in the women’s corps now?’ He looked at her uniform. ‘Very smart.’

‘Not really.’ The nurses’ uniform was pretty; hers was all baggy green. She wished she had scrubbed her boots and brushed her coat that morning. ‘I’m a driver for an officer. It’s easy work.’ She took her hand from his. ‘I thought you’d gone back to New York.’

‘I’m in the Flying Corps. Me and a whole bunch of chaps from Canada. I’m based in Norfolk. Marham, do you know it? Going back there tomorrow. I wear my uniform about, though, makes things easier with the white feather brigade.’

‘Michael is dead, you know.’ She said the words out loud and wished that the whole of Leicester Square would stop dead, frozen, not start again until she gave the word. Like a princess in a fairy story, waiting to be woken by her. The people carried on around her. She gazed at the poster again. How could those women really say
Go!

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Professor Punter wrote to me. He said he had lost a few chaps.’ He put his hand on her arm. The ring on his little finger glittered. ‘I was in Egypt when it happened, or I would have come to the funeral. I wrote to your mother; I hoped you might see it.’

She shook her head. She had hardly stayed long enough at Stoneythorpe to receive letters, hurrying off with Emmeline as soon as it had been decently possible. She blushed with guilt.

‘I was shocked to hear it. I am sure he died a very brave death.’

‘I don’t know. There wasn’t much about it in the letter from his CO. It just said he had been on active service. Professor Punter said he died saving another man in his regiment, Tom Cotton. Do you remember him?’

Jonathan shook his head.

‘You know. He was at Stoneythorpe. He was the groom.’ She hated saying the words out loud. Tom in bed, lungs thinned by gas.
I don’t want to marry you.
She felt her throat tighten, pushed the picture away.

‘Oh yes. I think so. He was in France too?’

‘That’s right. They were together. I went to see him in hospital. He didn’t want to see me.’ How easy those words were to say. If she kept saying them, over and over, perhaps they would no longer hurt.
My brother is dead, my father is in prison. Tom told me he never wanted to see me again.
He might even be dead now, she supposed, like Michael, in no-man’s-land somewhere.

‘Lots of chaps don’t want to see a soul when they are laid up.’

‘I asked him … I asked him how Michael died. He wouldn’t be clear. He said there were shots, shouts, that it was war.’

His hand was still on her arm. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we go and sit down? I found a nice coffee shop just around the corner from here.’

‘I can’t.’

His face fell. ‘You are due back?’

‘No – no, not exactly. The captain has discharged me for the day. I am just … well …’

‘Oh, come now. Some tea will do you good. I doubt the captain feeds you up, does he?’

‘Not really.’ She realised that she felt terribly hungry. Miss Webb hadn’t come round with a pie last night, so there’d been nothing for breakfast.

‘Come now. Just for a minute. It can’t hurt. Please, Miss de Witt. You would be doing me a great favour. I don’t have a girl, it’s just me. I don’t think I can face another evening in my hotel.’

‘Michael should be here. It shouldn’t be you and me. It should be the three of us.’

He squeezed her arm. ‘I know. But we are alive. Please. It’s my last day. I go back tomorrow.’ She looked at him, the pleading in his eyes, and something in her heart turned over. Cambridge loomed up next to Leicester Square, its spires glittering over the patchy grass, Michael in a punt, laughing.

‘I will, then.’

‘Come. This way.’ He winked at her. ‘Not a single chap here wouldn’t want to be escorting a gal in uniform. Especially a tall,
pretty one like you. You know they use English girls in the French clubs as dancers, because the French girls haven’t got the height?’

She tried to smile.

‘I am sorry. I shouldn’t be flippant. Bad American habit. It was terrible news about your brother.’ They sidestepped a gaggle of skeletal pigeons fighting over breadcrumbs. ‘The war has taken a lot of men.’ He put his hand on her arm again and she felt its warmth even through her coat.

‘Some of the girls think it’s great fun. I wish it would end.’ Two women passed, both eighteen or so, their hair beautifully golden, their faces bright yellow.

‘I hear they can’t even get that colour off in the bath,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Yellow for life. At least you’re not that.’

‘No.’ She smiled. ‘Munitions girls get paid more than me, though.’

Ladies and gentlemen walked arm in arm, too finely dressed to care about war, she supposed. The King might pop out any moment, she thought, wave them back to the Palace. ‘Our house is all different now. My father is in prison, my mother is sad. It isn’t much of a place any more.’

‘Yes, I heard about your father from Professor Punter as well. That is terrible news. Do you hear much from him?’

‘Never. That’s a good thing, though, we think. They would write to us if he were dead, so he must be still alive.’ She listened to this voice coming from her, this almost cheerful voice, the kind of girl who belonged on the recruitment posters, being brave and bright-eyed about everything. She expected him to say
Oh come now, Miss Witt, surely you are angry.

‘That’s true. This way.’ He pointed her to a pretty café with windows draped with gold and red curtains. A great stack of cakes adorned the centre.

‘Oh!’ She fell back. ‘We cannot go here!’

‘Why not?’ His face clouded. ‘You don’t like cake?’

‘No, no. I do. But … it is far too expensive.’

He smiled. ‘I have plenty of money left for my leave. And
no one to spend it on. As you know, my family are so far away. Indulge me, please, Miss de Witt.’

‘Well, all right then.’ He held the door open for her. Two immaculately suited waiters standing just inside the blue drapes welcomed them. The gold-painted walls were swathed in blue velvet and hung with paintings. At the tables were beautifully dressed women straight from Emmeline’s magazines, and a few men. One elaborately frilled little girl sat next to a woman who was perhaps her grandmother. Celia hung back. ‘I don’t think—’ she began, but Jonathan was already striding forward after the waiters. The three men stood by the table. Celia gazed at them for a moment, then blushed as she realised she should choose a chair. She sat and felt the expensive linen of the tablecloth fall over her knees.

‘Tea for two, please,’ Jonathan said. His voice was so loud, she thought the whole restaurant could hear. ‘And a selection of cakes for the lady, if you would.’ He turned to Celia. ‘A little coffee, perhaps?’ She nodded. ‘Coffee as well as the sponge,’ he directed.

Celia watched the waiters and bent close to Jonathan. ‘I don’t think they like uniforms here,’ she whispered.

‘Oh, they should welcome us. They are a little snooty, but, hey, same way that the meanest nurses slap you down and shout at you for trembling, but they get that needle in and out faster than you can say jack rabbit. The nice girls fret and miss the vein. This lot have the best cakes. In fact, I don’t trust any restaurant that doesn’t have snooty staff. Polite waiters, shocking food. Anyway, last time I came here, I was with three other chaps. They much prefer to have gentlemen if they are escorting ladies.’

‘The last time I came somewhere like this, it was for a … wedding. But it was a much poorer place. You wouldn’t think there were food shortages, being in here.’ She had read in Captain Russell’s
Times
last week that the government was thinking of going one step further than last year’s edict and restricting lunch in restaurants to one course, dinner to two.

‘No, indeed. There’s plenty of sugar, if you can pay for it.’

The waiter returned and poured the tea.

‘I don’t feel much of a lady any more,’ Celia said as he left.

‘You will always be a lady. Anyway, times are changing. I am sure most chaps are looking for a wife who can change gear and fix an engine.’

‘That I can do.’

‘Well, there you go.’ He winked, a hint of the old, confident Jonathan, the one she had seen before the war, imagined hosting parties. She began to smile but dropped her eyes, not wanting to meet his gaze. She looked so much older when she smiled these days, Emmeline said.

He was regarding her carefully. ‘You know, you really have grown up, Cel— I mean, Miss de Witt. Forgive me, but you were a girl before; you were – how shall I say it – not grown into your height.’

‘I’m still not beautiful,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘That’s Emmeline.’

He smiled quickly. ‘I wouldn’t say that was true. But now you have really … come into your features.’ She could see him scrabbling for words as the colour rose in his face. ‘Very appealing.’

She pushed down a desire to giggle. ‘Thank you.’

The waiter placed a great pile of cakes in between them. Celia suddenly felt the hunger curling in her stomach. She was desperate to grasp one. Verena’s strictures on manners ran through her head.

‘Come on, ladies first.’

She blushed and pulled out a dark brown rectangle sprinkled in what looked like caramel. She felt her fingers sink into the icing.

‘I can’t bear to start it. The faster one eats it, the quicker it will be gone. I rather want to look at it.’

‘Well, the faster you finish, the sooner you can have another one.’

She shook her head. ‘I saw the prices! Some of these cost nearly a week’s wages.’

‘All the more reason to have two. Now, start it, or I can’t!’

Celia looked up and saw that the little girl was staring at her. She gave her a great smile and held the cake up to her mouth. She did not want to use a fork, would use it for the next bite. Her
teeth touched the caramel icing, then the sponge. Her mouth filled with the taste, and she realised she had not eaten anything like this since before the war. The party that had failed – although Mrs Rolls could never make a cake as light as the one she was eating. She wished she wasn’t so desperately hungry, that she could enjoy the taste rather than merely fill the emptiness in her stomach. She could have eaten them all, told herself that she must force herself to behave. Jonathan took a slice of sponge.

She put down her cake. ‘Did Michael tell you much in his letters?’

‘I got the same from him as the other chaps out in France. Busy out here, lots of good chaps, mud, French friendly. I wonder if they gave them a set list of things to say. Michael would have been going through his men’s letters, making sure they didn’t give anything away.’

‘They didn’t want us to know the truth.’ The ring on his little finger had a tiny white stone in the right corner. She wondered that she had never seen it before. She pulled her eyes back, aware that she was staring.

‘Would you have written the truth?’

She fiddled with the silver spoon by her teacup. ‘No.’

‘War is a terrible thing, Miss de Witt. No logic.’

‘Tom didn’t really explain it. He said guns and shooting and going over the top, that’s all.’

‘I think that is pretty much how it is, you know. The men can’t see a thing. They are sent over and it is all they can do to keep their heads down. You know, it seems to me that the newspapers, the government, they make a heroic story out of it, but there really isn’t a story. It’s not like a book. Not that I’ve seen much combat myself, but from what I hear, a thousand men are sent over and nine hundred of them are shot. The German who shot Michael wouldn’t even have known he was doing it; he was just firing into space.’

‘I can’t believe that.’ She looked at his eyes and quickly glanced away. She thought of him in the garden saying that Sir Hugh would come back
for as fine a girl as your sister.
He had been wrong
then. He liked things short, she realised. He liked to summarise and know things in a concise way.
Sir Hugh will come back.
But that wasn’t enough; there were layers and shades now that made things impossible to understand with a few words. There were thousands of words out there, words in the past tense confused with the present, and no matter how many of them she conjured, she couldn’t get close to the truth, not yet.

‘Really, Celia, I think that’s the way it is. With the Flying Corps, we spend more time cleaning the planes than using them. But what I have seen is horrible stuff, no logic to it, a mess.’