They lunched on a succulent chicken and home-grown vegetables, then Hannah and Maddie helped Mrs Megalith clean crystals. By the time they had laid them outside, the air had changed and the light grown mellow. One by one they looked at their watches. It was 3.30 p.m. They had barely noticed the passing of time.
‘Good God, Hannah,’ Mrs Megalith gasped, fiddling with the string of beads she had tied to her glasses to avoid losing them. ‘George!’
‘And I promised I would do her hair!’ Maddie lamented, feeling guilty. But her grandmother turned on her, berating her dizziness.
‘George isn’t going to notice her hair, Madeleine. He loves her just the way she is.’
Chapter 2
Rita stood at the bus stop biting her nails. She was surrounded by George’s family and yet she felt totally alone, isolated on a small island of fear, excitement and hope. She watched Trees and Faye Bolton and knew that they felt much the same as she did. There was always the possibility that he wouldn’t be on the bus, that some misfortune had struck on his way over from France. Anxiety showed in the tautness around their eyes and behind their smiles as they waited with their daughter, Alice and her two small children. George wasn’t the only young man returning from the war; other families waited too, all cautiously optimistic but wary of celebrating too soon. The air vibrated with apprehension, uniting them all.
‘It is agony, isn’t it?’ said Faye to Rita. ‘I’m so nervous I don’t know what to do with myself.’
She cast a motherly glance at her daughter whose husband Geoffrey was yet to be demobilized, and felt sorry for her. Alice had always been an uncomplaining child, standing aside for George, who was impulsive and impatient. Always the centre of attention. She had never had to worry about Alice and still didn’t. She was serene and philosophical and seemed to drift along on life’s current, avoiding the rocks and whirlpools with ease. She promised herself that she would give her daughter due attention when Geoffrey returned from France. But today belonged to George.
Faye had a beautiful face. She seemed not to have aged at all: her skin was free of lines and as soft as brushed cotton. She wore her blonde hair scraped back into a chignon, which accentuated the fine lines of her jaw and cheekbones. Her eyes were the colour of the sky on a misty morning and used to weeping over beautiful music, a lovely painting or a sad story – she adored Tolstoy, Pushkin and Oscar Wilde. Only her hands betrayed her craft, for they were rough and ragged. But they could fashion anything out of clay as her talent lay in sculpture. She always intended to sell the objects she made – they could do with the money – but she grew too attached to them. ‘I create them with love, they’re a part of me now,’ she would say and so they were placed about the farmhouse among the books, pictures and scores of music she played on the upright piano: a chaotic kaleidoscope of all that she loved.
Trees put his arm around her waist and said nothing, a man of few words. Tall and thin with long arms and legs, he was nicknamed Trees on account of the walnut trees that were his passion. He spent his days on the land, looking after his animals, with his favourite sheepdog, Mildred, at his side. He had a noble face, handsome like a Roman bust, with an aquiline nose and deep-set eyes of a rich, honey brown. Faye leaned into him instinctively. She loved Trees but had never been able to reach him. He was detached and distant and more obsessed with his walnut trees than with any living creature. She didn’t feel in the least bit guilty that she had a lover. A woman needs to be loved and Faye needed affection more than most. For her, love was an inseparable part of music and art and, because she poured all her love into creating sculpture and playing the piano it was only natural that she should require something back.
She touched Rita’s arm. ‘The waiting will soon be over. You will come back with us, won’t you? George will drive you home after tea.’ Rita nodded then caught her breath, for there she saw, over Faye’s shoulder, the bus approaching in a stately fashion down the road.
They all turned and silence fell. The bus seemed to move in slow motion and they craned their necks to look through the windows, but all they saw was the mist in their eyes as they anticipated the faces of the young men they loved and longed for. Finally, the sound of squeaking brakes pierced the silence, then the thud of the door as it opened. A roar of joy burst from one family whose son was the first to descend. They swelled forward like a wave, then retreated, taking him with them so that only his blue hat could be seen bobbing above flapping arms and hands. Then another young soldier jumped out to a similar reception and finally, just when Rita was beginning to believe the horrors of her nightmares, George stood at the top of the steps, a broad smile stretching his face to the limit.