Where the Heart Is (25 page)

‘That’s not true,’ Bella protested shakily.

‘Yes it is,’ Bettina insisted, giving Bella a small shake to underline her point. ‘Mama and I have both said so to one another. We have both seen you grow through so much, Bella, and we have marvelled at the transformation in you, and been humbled by your own humility over that growth. To us you are a part of Jan as truly as though you had been married, and as precious to us as though we shared the same blood. Mama is dreadfully concerned about you. She wanted to come with me, but I felt we could talk more easily together as sisters.’

Bettina gave Bella a fierce hug and then kneeled back from her, taking hold of her hand and holding it in her own, as she told her, ‘You must not punish yourself like this, Bella. Truly, there is no need. It is not what Jan would have wanted.’ She reached into the pocket of her cotton skirt, her hand closed. Then she removed it again to open Bella’s palm and place something into it, curling Bella’s fingers over it and keeping them closed.

‘Mama wanted you to have this.’

Bella knew what it was before she opened her hand, tears rolling down her face as she focused on the thin gold chain with its small St Christopher
medallion. Maria’s St Christopher medallion, which Jan had once told her he had given his mother before they had left Poland.

‘No, I can’t take it,’ she wept.

‘No, you can’t “take it",’ Bettina agreed. ‘But Mama can gift it to you, Bella, as a token of our love. Please don’t reject our love, Bella.’

She was in Bettina’s arms again, both of them crying and holding one another tight.

The pain wasn’t over–it would never be over, Bella knew–but the poison of her guilt had been cleansed away.

‘I shall have something to say to Lena about all of this,’ she told Bettina once they were both sitting down again, their emotions back under control, drinking the freshly poured second cups of tea Bella had managed to wring from the pot with the addition of some more boiling water, restored to her rightful position as ‘hostess.’

‘I shall have something to say to her as well,’ Bettina agreed, ‘and it will be a very big “thank you".’

‘She really is the most darling girl,’ Bella acknowledged, her pride in Lena and all that she had achieved warming her voice.

She had lost Jan but unexpectedly she had been given something that would offer her some comfort. The tentative bond she and Bettina had forged together could, if they both cherished it in Jan’s name, grow stronger.

The sun pouring in through the window was making Lou’s scalp prickle with heat, or was it her
nervousness that was doing that? All around her in the room, Waafs were bent over their exam papers, some poring over the questions, others diligently writing.

She wanted to pass her exam so much; the questions seemed straightforward and Lou thought she knew the answers, but she wanted to read them again to make sure that she wasn’t missing anything. Sarge had warned them during their training that with aircraft it was vitally important to be a hundred and ten per cent sure you knew what you were doing before you did it, and that just thinking you knew wasn’t good enough.

Her pen felt sticky in her palm, and every now and again when she remembered about the previous evening and her interview with the CO, a sense of disbelief and wonder gripped her. Her being awarded a George Cross. Who would have thought it? Not her family, that was for sure. But she mustn’t think about that now; she must concentrate on her exam. Determinedly she started to write, the tension within the room fading as Lou focused on the questions, her forehead pleated into a frown of concentration.

‘Oh, thank heavens for that,’ Betty announced, falling into step beside Lou as they made their way toward the Naafi, when they had both finally been released from their practical exams. ‘I swear I thought I was going to melt in the workshop when I had to start riveting a joint. All I could think of was, when we first started the sarge yelling at us when he asked us if we knew what a file was and
Jenny put her hand up and said they were for putting letters in.’

‘It could have been worse. She could have said they were for doing her nails with,’ Lou laughed.

‘How did you get on? What did you have to do?’ Betty demanded.

‘I had to plug in one of the batteries and start up an engine, and then when it wouldn’t start I had to find out why. Luckily it was the spark plugs and I’d remembered how to do that. Then I to run through a check list and tell them what was missing from it and what would happen if it was missed off–and then I had to find the fault in an altimeter, and repair it.’

‘Phew, I’m glad I decided to train as a welder and not a flight engineer,’ Betty told her. ‘Do you fancy going to the dance in the mess on Saturday? We should have our results by then and we can either celebrate or commiserate with one another–not that it feels right dancing in uniform. I’d love to go out dancing in civvies again. Do you think—’

‘No,’ Lou stopped her, ‘not unless you want to be hauled up before the CO.’

‘Well, I never. I told you as how you should go and see Phoebe Evans, seeing as you’ve lost so much weight, and get her to alter your clothes for you. Stands to reason when I dare say there will have been enough cloth left to make something else, but I must say that I never expected to see such a difference in you, Emily. I hardly recognise you.’

The genuine kindness and approval in her
neighbour, Ivy’s, voice made Emily feel all the more self-conscious in this, her first public outing in her remade clothes.

‘I hardly recognise myself,’ she admitted.

‘And your hair looks better like that as well,’ Ivy continued. ‘When you first came here I thought you looked more like little Tommy’s grandmother than anything else, from the way you dressed and that. You look much better now.’

Ivy was inclined to be outspoken but Emily didn’t feel offended. What she said was true, after all. Even Tommy had commented on her ‘new’ appearance, telling her approvingly, ‘You look really pretty now, Mum.’

Of course she hadn’t lost weight deliberately–it was the war that had done that–but there was no point in looking a gift horse in the mouth, as the saying went, and Emily reckoned she owed it to Tommy to do what she could to make him feel proud of her.

There was no getting away from the fact, though, that it had been a real shock to look at her own reflection in the slightly spotted pier glass in the spare room that Phoebe Evans, the local dressmaker, whose husband was related to Brenda Evans at the Post Office, used for her customers.

Emily had known that she’d lost weight, of course, but what with her keeping on wearing the same clothes–albeit now very loose on her, she hadn’t realised just what a transformation had taken place until she’d been standing there looking at a slender woman wearing a shirtwaister dress in a multicoloured floral print cotton that she
hadrecognised as formerly the much larger sacklike garment she had been wearing. The shirtwaister buttoned all the way down the front and went in at the waist with a neat A-line skirt. Her with a waist, a proper waist, which she now needed a belt for.

Emily had been so overcome that she hadn’t been able to speak, but thankfully Phoebe Evans had understood, patting Emily gently on the arm and smiling at her.

Now Emily had a wardrobe full of pretty summer dresses and skirts, and her winter clothes were now with Phoebe Evans, being made over. Phoebe had offered to make her up some extra things out of the spare fabric but Emily had shaken her head and said that instead she wanted to donate it for those children whose mothers could not afford to replace the clothes they had outgrown.

It had been Phoebe who had suggested that Emily might like to think about visiting her cousin, who was a hairdresser, to get a new hairstyle to go with her ‘new’ clothes.

Naturally, Phoebe wanted to put business her cousin’s way–Emily wasn’t daft–but there had been no harm in going to see what could be done.

As a result, Emily now had a pretty, much shorter haircut, which somehow made her look as though she had more hair, not less, since it allowed the natural wave in her hair to be shown off instead of being dragged back into a bun.

And thinking of buns, Emily had been thrilled to bits to discover when she looked in her own mirror that what Con had always described as her
‘little currant eyes in a bun-shaped face’ looked so much larger now even the shape of her face had changed.

It had been one thing, though, to note all these changes in the privacy of her own bedroom–she had hurried home from the hairdresser’s with a scarf over her head–but quite another to go out in public with her hair newly styled and wearing one of her altered frocks.

She had deliberately chosen half-day closing but, as luck would have it, her neighbour had spotted her, and now the revealed curves of her cheekbones were pink with all that she was feeling as she hurried home.

‘Fran, there’s something I want to talk to you about.’ Brandon’s voice was thin but firm. His health was deteriorating and they both knew it, but they didn’t discuss it. There was no need and no point. His doctor visited regularly, and was on hand should they need to call him, although Francine had put her foot down and refused the assistance of a live-in nurse. She wanted to keep things as normal as she could for Brandon for as long as she could.

It amazed and bemused her that she had come to feel so much love for the young American she had married more out of pity than anything else–not the love of a woman for a man, not the foolish youthful passion she had felt for Con, nor the deep intense woman’s love and desire she had felt for Marcus, but the love of one human being for another, which was, she thought, perhaps the purest form of love of all.

After Brandon’s collapse at the embassy, the American Ambassador had visited them, naturally concerned for Brandon, and had had to be taken into their confidence. Since then Brandon had seen the Ambassador twice without her–at his own request. Francine had assumed that he had wanted to talk to the Ambassador about the situation with his parents: the father who, according to Brandon, was terrified of the idea of ill health and death and who would refuse to accept that his son could carry a condition inherited from him that was going to kill him; and the mother so acutely ‘sensitive’ that hysteria would be her response to Brandon’s illness.

Poor Brandon, to be born to parents so rich in material assets, and yet with so little real love to give to their son.

Now Francine smiled at Brandon and reminded him gently, ‘If you are going to try yet again to get me to agree to be a beneficiary to the trust funds your grandfather left to you, then you already know my answer. I don’t want your money, Brandon.’

‘No, I know you don’t, but please try to see things from my point of view, Fran. I love you and more than anything else I want to do whatever I can, whilst I can, to make your future as happy and secure as you deserve it to be, so I want you to promise me something.’

Francine’s heart ached for him. He was so young and he had had so much potential to do good things. To have all that he could have been taken from him in such a cruel way was hard enough
for her to have to witness, so how hard must it be for Brandon himself to have to bear?

He was half lying and half sitting in a day bed in the living room of their apartment, his poor wasted body covered by a blanket and the electric fire on to keep him warm, even though it was summer.

Francine had been sitting beside him on a stool reading to him from the
Illustrated London News,
which she now put down to reach for his hand and hold it in her own.

‘You mustn’t worry about me,’ she told him gently.

‘Of course I must,’ Brandon insisted. ‘You are my wife, and it’s my right as well as my duty to do so, and to worry about your future when I am no longer here. I want your promise, Fran, that when I am gone you will remember now, and that whatever decisions you choose to make you make them in the knowledge that I want you to be happy.’

A lump in her throat prevented her from speaking, so instead she had to nod her head.

A small squeeze of her hand signified that Brandon was satisfied with her response.

His voice thinner, he continued, ‘I’ve seen what money can do to people, both too much of it and too little. I have left you an allowance that will provide for you but not too much nor too little, and I have left a lump sum for medical research into the causes of this wretched disease that is destroying me, but it is about the rest of the money that I want to talk to you now.’

‘Brandon—’

‘No, please let me say what I need to say, Fran, whilst I still can. The legal details have all been dealt with but I want to tell you what I’ve done. The money that will come to my estate from the trust fund left to me by my grandfather is to go into a foundation, the income from which is to be used to help children and young people, those who are orphaned or abandoned, or treated cruelly by those who should love them. I have appointed you to act as a trustee of this foundation on my behalf and to sit on its board. It is a lot to ask of you, I know; when this war ends, as it eventually will, there will be many children in need of our foundation’s help. You will be called upon to travel, to judge, to give to them the same compassion you have already given to me. You will be doing this in my name, so that I will have the glory and you will have the heartache, but there is no one that I trust more than you to do in my name what I won’t be here to do myself. Will you do it? Could you, would you, make the sacrifices you will have to make, and which I have no right to ask you to make, given those you have already made to be here with me now?’

Francine’s heart was thudding against her ribs. She had known that Brandon wanted to do something charitable with his wealth–he had talked about it with increasing intensity as his health had deteriorated–but she had had no idea that he intended her to be a part of it.

‘Your foundation is a magnificent idea, Brandon, and typical of you. As you say, it would be a heavy responsibility for me, with many demands on my time. I take it I won’t be the only trustee?’