‘I say, you’re jolly good for a girl,’ one of the other men said, when they were safely back at Carlyon once more. Her spirits soared.
Still, she was glad when the visitors all left, though her hopes to have Angie to herself were quickly dashed. A few days later, it was Ed and Angie’s turn to go away to a houseparty and though Beatrice and Peter played some desultory games of tennis at the club, the atmosphere was gloomy.
Finally, near the end of August, came the longed-for letter from Rafe. She ran upstairs to read it alone.
Dear Bea,
I’m sorry I’ve been a shabby correspondent, and that we haven’t met for so long. I often think of you and St Florian. How are your honourable ps and my sainted aunt and uncle? It all seems another, faraway world. I’m billeted near Hyde Park now. It’s not what I would have chosen, a bit dull, but the life’s not too bad. I don’t see my people as much as they’d like. The old man’s home from India as well now. His regiment have found him a desk job here in London. I suppose something is going to happen sooner or later, that’s what everybody says, and then maybe things will liven up. I wish it would get on with it if it’s going to. It’s the waiting that’s bad for everybody.
Let me know if you come to London, and I’ll see if we can meet.
Yours as ever,
Rafe.
She read it several times, repeating the Yours as ever, to herself, trying to squeeze meaning out of it.
Two weeks later, at the beginning of September, Rafe’s wish was granted. Hitler’s tanks rolled into Poland and the Allies delivered their ultimatum. Two long days passed and the world held its breath.
Sunday 3 September was a gloriously sunny day. Beatrice accompanied her mother to Mass, which Delphine had got into the habit of attending recently. They emerged as the clock on the Anglican church tower struck eleven, and were climbing the Jacob’s Ladder, when she glanced up ahead to see the alarming vision of Hugh Marlow prowling at the top, clearly agitated.
‘Hurry!’ he shouted to them. ‘For God’s sake, hurry up!’
‘What is it, Hugh?’ Delphine cried, but he didn’t reply, just stared wildly at the sky and gesticulated to them madly.
‘What’s the matter?’ Delphine panted as they reached the top.
‘Confound it, haven’t you heard? We’re at war. I’ve closed all the windows. I expect they’ll be here soon.’ He checked his watch and looked again at the horizon. Beatrice and Delphine looked, too. The sky was a deep, glorious empty blue, all the way to eternity.
A horrible mournful wail started up somewhere below in the town. A woman began screaming – a thin, passionless sound.
‘It’s the siren. Come on.’ He hustled them back to the house where he fussed about fitting their gas masks and they sat fearfully in the sitting room waiting for the bombs to drop. Instead, some fifteen minutes later, the all clear sounded. They waited twenty minutes more. No roar of plane engines, no explosions. Nothing happened.
‘Well, that’s it, Beatrice. You won’t be going back to school.’ Her father looked white with exhaustion, but triumphant, too. At last something was happening in his quiet, sequestered life.
In fact, she did go back, but only once it was apparent that the bombs weren’t coming any time soon. The next few days were a manic whirl of preparation. The Brookers lent their gardener to dig a hole for an Anderson shelter. Cook stationed buckets of water in every room – whether against gas attack or fire even she didn’t seem sure, but Jinx made a right mess drinking from them. Mrs Marlow began to stockpile tins and bottles in the garden shed and boiled up several preserving pans of blackberry and apple for jam.
A week later, two dozen evacuees arrived off the train from London. ‘We’re not having one,’ Hugh Marlow said, banging the marmalade pot down on the breakfast-table. ‘Not with my condition. There are plenty of others who can take one better than we can.’
‘Oh, Hugh,’ was all Delphine said, spreading her napkin with a loud flap. She wouldn’t look at him, and later, took him his coffee without speaking, banging the study door behind her. In the middle of the morning she went out. When she returned, she was holding the hand of a skinny five-year-old boy with a badly repaired hare lip. At the sight of Jinx the boy gave a terrified whimper and hid behind Mrs Marlow’s skirts. ‘This is Jamie,’ she told her husband and daughter defiantly. ‘He was the only one left. Someone had to take him, Hugh, and I know my duty.’
Beatrice gazed at Jamie, his thinness, his grimy city skin, in astonishment. But what was more astonishing was that her mother had openly gone against her father for the first time in their marriage.