Selwyn, allowed to kiss the bride, took me in his arms. Something extraordinary happened to the room then. It seemed to be flooded with a sudden buzzing light, very fierce, as if a piece of Heaven had been torn down to earth to land all around us.
We had cake and champagne afterwards in Bishop’s Tea Rooms. Lady Brock had supplied the champagne. Daniel read out a telegram from Edward in Singapore. ‘DARLING SISTER STOP OVERJOYED STOP HUSBAND CLEARLY MAN OF GREAT DISCERNMENT STOP HOPE MEET SOON STOP MUCH LOVE EDWARD.’
Daniel read aloud in capitals, and included all the stops.
We came out into the square. Those holding champagne glasses toasted us. I shook hands with Selwyn’s bevy of very-much-removed cousins, who then fitted themselves decorously back into a long black automobile and departed.
‘Dear girl,’ said Lady Brock at my side, and gave me a carmine kiss on the cheek before going towards Selwyn.
Lucy loitered nearby, and I went to her. ‘You look so nice, Lucy.’
She did, in a cream linen jacket and skirt, and a cream cloche hat with a small lilac rose. We had chosen the fabric together, my gift to her as bridesmaid. She chewed her lip. ‘Don’t forget us, Ellen.’
I laughed. ‘I’m moving back to Upton, silly!’
Suddenly she put her arm in mine. We drifted away from our companions. ‘I do love Waltham Square,’ she said. ‘It feels like freedom to me.’
‘I never knew that.’
‘Oh yes. Coming out on the bus, those Saturdays, to visit you. I never go anywhere, you see.’
I smiled. ‘Neither of us are great travellers, Lucy.’
‘You will be now. He’s got the wanderlust, your Mr Parr.’
Selwyn wanted to take me to Italy, Greece, the Holy Land. ‘We’ll have to wait until this is all over.’
‘One day, though.’
‘Yes.’
Selwyn approached us, took our hands, mine and Lucy’s. The breeze bowled the few clouds along. Mr Kennet’s weathercock swung overhead and caught fire.
Ellen
Late March, 1944
18
‘I REALLY CAN’T get it at Waltham. They don’t stock it.’
As I lied, I slid the pin of my pearl brooch into the placket of my high-necked blouse. Put my cotton handkerchief in my skirt pocket, and fastened my watch around my wrist. Arrayed in these gifts, all from my husband, I stood up. The dressing-table mirror tilted on its spindles, swinging out of the vertical, so that I looked disconcertingly up my own nose. My lying nose.
A week had passed since Mrs Berrow’s visit. I had endured two days of anguish; then, when I began to jump every time the telephone rang, I’d written back to her. Dear Mrs Berrow, I have come to think it would be best if I came down to Southampton as you suggested. A hasty scrawl, the stamp pasted on askew, shoved into the letterbox furtively, trying to hide the deed even from myself. I had no idea what would come of this. I simply couldn’t remain in limbo, waiting for the blow to fall. Not even certain if there were a blow to fall.
The man might not be there, of course. What would that do to me? I had no idea.
‘Surely they can send it,’ Selwyn said now. ‘What sort of item is it, anyway?’
I was ready with my fabricated excuse. ‘The sort ladies buy in person. From the chemist’s shop.’
In the corner of my eye I watched him pull the white shirt over his head. When his face emerged it was still flushed. ‘Ah. Well. You must do what you must, my love. Indeed.’
I dragged the brush through my hair, out to the side and let it fall. ‘I could cut half this hair off and still make a bun.’ Even to my own ears I sounded brittle. ‘Some poor woman might need a wig. Perhaps I’ll ask in Southampton.’
‘Don’t you dare.’
I turned from the mirror and pulled my jacket on. ‘If I’m not back, send Pamela to Lucy’s after school. To spare Elizabeth.’
The wind had dropped and masses of cool air hung motionless under the trees. I was glad of my heavier canvas skirt. In my handbag was Mrs Berrow’s reply to my letter. I was to meet her, as she had suggested, at the Lyons tea house near the ruined Crown, and our appointment was at four o’clock. I had not been able to tell Selwyn about what Mrs Berrow had said. I couldn’t even broach the subject to Lucy. Every word uttered would bring the unthinkable closer to reality.
And here I was, pushing the unthinkable closer. But I couldn’t do otherwise.
The driver pulled up at the stop, shaking me out of my daze. I climbed aboard. ‘Goodness, I didn’t hear you coming! A return to Southampton, if you please.’
‘I was coasting.’ It was Rick Staveley from Upton, the man lame since birth who had driven this route since before the war. He put two warm coppers into my hand. ‘Twopence change. Do you want the bus station, Mrs Parr?’
‘No. The Crown stops.’
‘Right you are.’ He put the bus into gear. ‘Funny the way we still call them that, even though the Crown’s been smashed to smithereens. You know we shan’t be allowed down there in a few days? The company told us. They’re shutting the whole coast off, all the way along.’ He swept his arm from west to east.
‘Mr Kennet said.’
‘I’m to turn round at Fair Mead and come back. That’s what the company says.’
The bus swung through the lanes under the budding branches that were on the point of releasing their freshest green, and I remembered sitting with Mother – Rick had been driving us then, too – and reading her a letter from Edward. The one about the ship’s cats, the superfluity thereof. When we reached the coast the water flared in sudden sunshine. Will we see the sea soon? my mother had said, like a child on holiday. Now we were passing along the mauled high street, the piles of masonry still strewn about like a carnivore’s leavings. I used to imagine the enemy rebuilding the high street after our conquest but now people were clearing rubble, sweeping it down to the shoreline for hard-standings and new quays. Caissons, jetties, fuel channels to feed the gathering boats and trucks and tanks, and surely every yard of it photographed by the Luftwaffe. I imagined them cruising with glinting wings over our skies, the maps silvered as if by moonlight, our little streets outlined. The mixture of hope and alarm curdled in me, nauseating.
I went into the Lyons and found a table by the window with a clear view of the hostel and the ruin of the Crown. The entire top storey, the roof and the upper set of windows, had slid down and sideways, as if the building were sinking like a doomed ocean liner.
‘There’s nothing behind,’ said a man. ‘Just this fa?ade. The rest is a heap of rubble.’
I turned my head and saw instantly that it was him. A chubby, childish face with a rounded chin and Pamela’s light, peat-brook eyes, wide-set and clear. Light eyes and dark-honey hair, his a little wavy where hers was straight, glossy. That was the only difference. A pulse pounded in my throat, made me afraid to speak.
He continued to stand by my table, looking out at the Crown. Some time went by. Finally I managed to say, ‘It’s horrible.’
He blinked, slowly like his daughter, as my words took him from his reverie. ‘Yes.’ He seated himself at the next table. ‘It is.’
We sat in silence, both facing the street. Then a waitress came over. ‘If sir and madam could share a table? We’re chock-a-block today.’
We said in unison, ‘I’m waiting for a friend,’ and she tutted in disbelief. ‘Really, I am,’ I told her, but she’d already taken herself off.
‘People have become so rude.’ Gingerly he pulled his coat from his shoulder. I saw a sling and a bandaged hand.
‘Anzio,’ he said, and I nodded.
Once I started looking at him, I couldn’t stop. I should forget about Phyllis Berrow, and leave. Just then he lumbered to his feet. ‘There she is.’ Mrs Berrow, laden with a heavy shopping bag, was pushing at the café door. She pulled a scarf from her head in the throng, gave a bleary glance towards the window and smiled at me. Then her eyes widened as she saw him, but she was tough and handy and she smiled at him too. ‘Goodness, it’s that young man from Plymouth!’ She jostled her way to the table and he stood and pulled out a chair for her. ‘I see you’ve already met my friend here. Mrs White.’