Alan’s letter had become a totem of sorts, an integral part of this journey that she’d embarked upon. She’d had it with her in the shelter that night, tucked inside the copy of David Copperfield she’d been rereading. While the old duck from number thirty-four clacked her knitting needles and hummed ‘We’ll Meet Again’, and the four Whitfield boys tripped over people’s feet and honked like geese, Juliet had read again Alan’s account of the scene at Dunkirk, heavily redacted, but striking nonetheless. He’d described the men on the beach, and the journey to make it that far; the villagers they’d passed on their way, small children and elderly women with bowed legs, wagons piled high with suitcases and birdcages and knitted blankets. All of them fleeing the misery and destruction, but with nowhere safe to run.
‘I came across a young boy with a bleeding leg,’ he’d written. ‘He was sitting on a broken fence and the look in his eyes conveyed that awful point beyond panic, the terrible acceptance that this was now his lot. I asked him his name, and whether he needed help, where his family were, and after a time he answered me in soft French. He didn’t know, he said, he didn’t know. The poor lad couldn’t walk and his cheeks were stained with tears and I couldn’t just leave him there, all alone. He reminded me of Tip. Older, but with the same seriousness of spirit as our little one. He hopped on my back in the end, with no complaint or query, and I carried him to the beach.’
Juliet reached the wooden jetty, and even through the twilight she could see that it had deteriorated in the twelve years since she and Alan had sat on its end drinking tea from Mrs Hammett’s thermos. She closed her eyes briefly and let the noise of the river surround her. Its constancy was heartening: no matter what else was happening in the world, regardless of human folly or individual torment, the river kept flowing.
She opened her eyes and let her gaze roam across the dense copse of trees beyond, hunkered down for the night. She wouldn’t go beyond this point. The children would be frightened if they woke and found her gone.
Turning to look back in the direction from which she’d come, above the soft curved darkness of the Birchwood Manor garden, she could just make out a silhouette of sharper lines, the rise of the twin gables and punctuating columns of the eight chimneys.
She sat herself against the trunk of a nearby willow, positioning the whisky bottle in a clump of grass at her feet.
Juliet felt a wave of excitement, dampened almost at once by the circumstances that had brought her here.
The idea to come back to this place, twelve years after she’d discovered it, had arrived fully formed. They’d clambered from the shelter at the sound of the all-clear and Juliet’s thoughts had been on other things.
The smell was the first indication that things were awry – smoke and smoulder, dust and unhappiness – and then they’d emerged into the haze and an uncanny brightness. It had taken a moment to realise that their house was gone and that dawn streamed now through a gap in the row of terraces.
Juliet hadn’t realised that she’d dropped her bag until she saw her things on the ground at her feet amongst the rubble. The pages of David Copperfield were fluttering where the volume had landed open, the old postcard she’d been using as a bookmark lying beside it. Later, there would be a thousand small details to organise and worry about, but in that moment, as she reached to retrieve the postcard and the picture of The Swan on its front came into focus, and her children’s panicked voices piped in and out of earshot, and the immensity of what was happening to them rose like a hot cloud around her, there’d been only one cool thought.
A feeling so strong had risen from that place where memories are stored, and with it an idea that hadn’t then seemed crazy at all but clear and certain. Juliet had known simply that she had to get the children to safety. The imperative had been instinctive, animal; it was all that she could focus on, and the sepia image on the postcard, a gift from Alan, a reminder of their honeymoon, had made it seem that he was standing beside her, holding her hand. And the relief, after missing him so long, after worrying and wondering while he was far away, unreachable, unable to help, had been overwhelming. As she picked her way across the rubble to take Tip’s hand, she’d felt a surge of exhilaration, because she’d known exactly what she must do next.
It had occurred to her afterwards that the flash of certainty might actually have been a symptom of madness, brought on by shock, but over the following days, as they slept on the floors of friends and acquired a motley collection of new essentials, she’d settled on the idea. The school was closed and children were leaving London in droves. But Juliet couldn’t imagine sending her three off alone. It was possible that the older two might have leapt at the chance of adventure – Bea especially relishing the independence and opportunity to live with anyone but her mother – but not Tip, not her little bird.
It had taken days after the bombing before he’d let her out of his sight, watching her every move with wide, worried eyes so that Juliet’s jaw ached by evening with the effort of having to keep a bright face on things. Finally, though, with much love and the clever deployment of new rocks for his collection, she’d been able to reassure him sufficiently to earn an hour or so to herself.
She’d left the three of them with Alan’s best friend, Jeremy, a playwright of some note upon whose Bloomsbury floor they were currently sleeping, and had used the phone box on Gower Street to telephone The Swan; Mrs Hammett herself had picked up at the faraway end of the whistling line. The older woman had remembered her with genuine delight when Juliet explained about the honeymoon, and promised to ask around the village when she mentioned her intention to bring her children to the country. The following day, when Juliet telephoned back, Mrs Hammett had told her that there was one house vacant and available to lease. ‘A bit rundown, but you could do worse. There’s no electricity, but with the blackout I suppose that’s neither here nor there. The rent is fair and there’s nothing else for love nor money, what with the evacuees taking up every spare room this side of London.’
Juliet had asked where it was in relation to The Swan, and when Mrs Hammett described the location, she’d felt a thrill up her spine. She’d known exactly which house; she hadn’t needed to think it through. She’d told Mrs Hammett that they’d take it and made brief arrangements to wire a deposit of the first month’s rent to the group that was handling the lease. She replaced the receiver and stood for a moment inside the phone box. Beyond the glass, the fast-moving clouds of the morning had gathered and darkened, and people were walking faster than usual, arms folded across their bodies, heads down against the sudden chill.
Until that point Juliet had kept her plans to herself. It wouldn’t have taken much to talk her out of it and she hadn’t wanted that to happen. But now, having come this far, there were certain things that would need to be done. Mr Tallisker, for one, would have to be told. He was her boss, the editor at the newspaper where she worked, and her absence would therefore be noticed.
She went straight to the offices on Fleet Street, arriving minutes after the rain began to fall. In the bathroom on the first floor she did what she could with her damp hair, fluffing her blouse backwards and forwards in an attempt to dry it. Her face was drawn, she noticed, and pale. In lieu of lipstick she gave her lips a pinch, rubbed them together, smiled at her reflection. The effect was unconvincing.
Sure enough: ‘Good God,’ said Mr Tallisker when his secretary had left them. ‘Things are grim.’ He gathered his eyebrows as she told him what she intended to do, leaning back in his leather chair, arms crossed. ‘Birchwood,’ he said at last, from the other side of the vast paper-strewn desk. ‘Berkshire, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not a lot of theatre.’
‘No, but I plan to come back to London every fortnight – every week if necessary – and file my reviews that way.’
He made a noise that did not signal encouragement and Juliet felt her imagined future slipping away. His voice when he spoke again was unreadable. ‘I was sorry to hear about things.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Bloody bombers.’
‘Yes.’
‘Bloody war.’ He picked up his pen and dropped it repeatedly, incendiary-style, against the wooden surface of his desk. Beyond the crooked blinds, half-drawn against the dusty window, a fly was batting its death throes.
A clock ticked.