Nearly two years later, a pair of wings on his uniform, and his training with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in Canada behind him, Teddy had returned, sailing back from New York on the Queen Mary. “How lovely,” Izzie said, when informed of this. “I’ve had some marvellous times on board that ship.” Teddy didn’t bother to inform her that the liner was now a troopship for the American forces that he had been squeezed on to (“down with the bilge water”) and that the men—half of whom were seasick for the entire voyage—were packed tighter than the proverbial sardines in a tin. They felt as vulnerable, too, as they made the Atlantic crossing in foul weather without a convoy, the liner being considered fast enough to outrun German U-boats, something that Teddy was not convinced about. “Yes, the food was wonderful,” he said sardonically to her (although it was when compared to the meagreness of rationing). He didn’t know whether or not she had caught his tone. It wasn’t always easy to tell with Izzie.
He had had a couple of days’ leave between returning from Canada and joining an Operational Training Unit. His sister had managed to get away from London to Fox Corner for lunch. Izzie herself was “loitering” there, uninvited, according to Sylvie. The tally for the autumn of ’42: Pamela had evacuated herself to the middle of nowhere although she would soon return; Maurice spent most of his time in a Whitehall bunker; Jimmy was training with the Army in Scotland. Hugh was dead. How could that be? How could his father be dead?
Compassionate leave had been arranged for Teddy and the Navy (in the person of Ursula’s man at the Admiralty, although Teddy never knew this) had found him a berth on a merchant ship sailing in convoy, but at the last minute the order was rescinded. “You would have missed the funeral anyway,” Sylvie said, “so there wouldn’t have been much point.”
“I’m surprised,” Maurice said, “that in the midst of war someone would have considered it a significant request.” “Maurice,” Ursula said, “is one of those people who rubber-stamp dockets—or not—and draw red crosses through application forms. Exactly the kind of person who would rescind a compassionate-leave request.” Maurice would have been very annoyed to be considered junior enough to rubber-stamp anything. He signed. A fluid, careless signature from his silver Sheaffer. But not in this case.
Whoever had done the rescinding was to be thanked. The convoy had been attacked by U-boats and the ship that Teddy had been designated to sail in had gone down with all hands. “Saved for a higher purpose,” Ursula said.
“You don’t believe that, do you?” Teddy asked, alarmed that his sister might have caught religion.
“No,” she said. “Life and death are completely random, that much I have learned.”
“Completely. One learned that in the last war,” Izzie said, lighting a cigarette even though she had eaten hardly any of the stewed chicken that Sylvie had cooked for lunch. Sylvie had killed the bird this morning to “celebrate” the return of “the prodigal son.” (Again, he thought. Was this to be his role in life? The eternal prodigal?) “Hardly prodigal,” Teddy said defensively. “I’ve been learning to fight a war.”
“Yet, lo, we have killed the fatted chicken to welcome you back,” Ursula said.
“More like an old boiler,” Izzie said.
“Takes one to know one.” From Sylvie, of course.
Izzie pushed her plate away and Sylvie said, “I hope you’re going to finish that. That chicken died for you.” Ursula gave a little yelp of derision and Teddy winked at her. Yet it seemed wrong to be happy without Hugh here.
Izzie had decamped across the pond the minute war was declared but had returned by the time Teddy sailed back into port in Liverpool, claiming “patriotism” as a higher moral duty than safety. “Patriotism,” Sylvie said witheringly, “contains the word ‘rot’ within it. You came home because your marriage was a disaster.” Izzie’s famous playwright husband was “having affairs left, right and centre in Hollywood,” Sylvie said. At the word “affairs” Teddy glanced across the Regency Revival dining-room table at Ursula, but she was keeping her eyes on the plate of sacrificial chicken in front of her.
Sylvie had quite a flock of hens now and did a good bartering trade in the village with her eggs. The spent birds usually ended up on Fox Corner’s dining table when they had stopped pulling their weight on the egg-laying front. “LMF,” Ursula said, and when Sylvie looked blank added, “Lack of Moral Fibre. Waverers. When the nerves get the better of men in the services, but they call it cowardice.”