I took a step back. “Venetia’s pregnant?”
“Shh,” she quickly said. “Don’t tell anyone I told you.” She must be scared someone will say she’s been gossiping, or causing trouble. She turned and dashed out of the kitchen, leaving me confounded, then dismayed.
Suddenly everything makes sense!
Why Daddy is furious with Venetia
Why Venetia is not speaking to Daddy
Why Mama is excessively concerned about Venetia’s health
Why Venetia is extremely upset that Slater is missing
Why everyone is acting very oddly and, worst of all,
Why no one is telling me a thing about it
Yet it seems strange that Elsie should be the one to mention it. She hardly speaks to me at all—I’ve often wondered if she has a chip on her shoulder about being a servant. Venetia says that’s why getting staff is so difficult these days. No one wants to be bossed about. Maybe Elsie was getting her own back on us, especially now that she has twice as much work since Proggett left. We hadn’t seen him for a day or so, and forced open his room. It was completely cleared out. He must have left the night of the bomb. We’re all baffled, except for Daddy, who’s completely livid.
I decided to find Mama to ask why she hadn’t told me about Venetia being pregnant, but when I found her in the nursery with whining Lawrence, I chose not to say anything. Sometimes it’s best to carry on as usual so that no one suspects that I know. I’ve been thinking about it all day, though, turning it over and over in my mind. I can’t help relishing the idea that this will surely be the end of Venetia.
This will put her on a back foot for the rest of her life.
Tuesday, 6th August, 1940
In the bleak afternoon drizzle, our small, sobbing group huddled outside the old church, chilled and nervous, for Hattie’s funeral, the final switch on dear Hattie’s life. The proper end that was supposed to round the whole thing off, but seemed so contrary and out of place for such a vibrant, warmhearted character.
“It’s just so hard to believe that she isn’t going to come careening around the corner, her usual beaming smile across her face,” Kitty whispered with a loud sniff, and we looked over to the corner where she might appear.
“I feel that she’s with us in spirit,” I replied, clutching baby Rose closer, her little face smiling on this dreadful day that would change her world forever—almost definitely for the worse.
“She doesn’t know her mother’s gone, does she?” Kitty murmured.
“No, and it’ll be a few years till she’s old enough to understand. She’ll never have known Hattie, only Victor and the people who look after her.”
“Who is going to look after her until Victor gets back?” Kitty’s eyes darted from the baby to me.
It was a good question.
Victor’s aunt wrote to say they’re too frail to have Rose. I hadn’t realized they’re in their eighties now. Sadly they couldn’t even make it for the funeral. So Rose has been staying with us—the Colonel and me—at Ivy House for now. I suppose I’ll have to find a home for her, a nice family to foster her.
No one’s heard a thing from Victor for months, although the Colonel had his ship checked, and it seems it is doing all right somewhere in a remote part of the Atlantic. Victor probably hasn’t even heard about Hattie’s death; he might be still in a different reality where his wife and new daughter live happily in their small, snug home, while he is the one facing the bombs, he is the one risking his life so that they may live free. Oh, the wretched irony of it all.
Before the Vicar opened the big church doors for us to enter, he crept out to have a word with me.
“We haven’t any pallbearers,” he whispered hurriedly.
I looked at him, puzzled.
“There are no men to carry the coffin,” he elucidated, coughing to cover his embarrassment. We looked around. A group of mothers and children from Hattie’s school had come, but apart from old Mr. Dawkins and the Brigadier, who was clearly in no mood for carrying coffins, we were all women. The world seemed to fade in front of me. Dear Hattie, who was like a daughter to me, taken from life so early, and we couldn’t even give her a proper funeral.
“Sorry,” the Vicar muttered. “Our usual bearers are at war or in the fields or making bombs. There’s nothing I can do.”
“Everyone’s harried these days,” I said quietly, annoyed that this wretched war is making us too busy for everything. If something needs to be done, it’s up to us women to make do.
And then it dawned on me.
“We will carry the coffin,” I announced.
A sea of faces looked up.
There was a moment of shock, when everyone seemed to look from me to the Vicar, registering the situation.