A Gathering Storm (20 page)

They ate sandwiches in a Lyons Corner House, where Beatrice admired the nippies rushing to and fro and tried to imagine what it would be like to work in a job like that. She’d like to do something useful once she’d finished with school, but the question was what. Anything but go back to St Florian and live a suffocating life of seclusion with her parents, she knew that much.

‘I suppose I’ll have to try and get a commission,’ Peter said miserably, when they discussed the future, ‘unless Father can find me a desk job. I couldn’t stand to stay at home. I’d go mad. Beatrice, why did you come?’

‘I wanted to see the museums,’ she replied, knowing exactly what he meant but not sure of the reason behind his question.

‘No, why did you come to stay? You know my mother’s up to something.’

‘Yes, I do,’ Beatrice said, wiping her fingers on her handkerchief. ‘But it’s all right, I can manage her.’

‘Thank the lord for that,’ he said. ‘We’re no good for you, any of us.’

‘You said that before. Don’t be silly,’ she said.

‘No, I mean it. You’re too nice for us Wincantons, Bea.’

‘Well, thanks very much.’

They hardly spoke on the journey up to the Exhibition Road, both a bit out of sorts after this conversation. Looking down from the bus Beatrice considered how calm and ordinary everything seemed. She’d expected people to be fearful, to see more evidence that invasion was expected any day. Yet there was little, apart from the ubiquitous piles of sandbags, the blackout paper and the odd boarded-up window, to suggest that this wasn’t like any other Christmas. Occasionally she saw men in uniform, but not as many as might be expected. Every now and then she’d glimpse the back of one who looked like Rafe and would will him to turn round so she could see his face. Every time one did, she was disappointed. Why hadn’t Rafe replied to her letter? Had he been sent away somewhere?

When they reached Knightsbridge it started to sleet. Feeling unaccountably melancholy, she watched the blobs of melting snow shuffle down the window.

The V&A cheered her. It was delightful, she decided, as they moved through the rooms, Peter in a world of his own as he studied the objects and read the labels, she drifting after him in a pleasant haze. When they emerged, a little before three, the sleet was worse, and as they descended the steps, she slipped in slush and fell, scraping her leg on the sharp edge of the stone.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, helping her up.

‘I think so,’ she replied, examining her calf. ‘Blast!’ Her stocking had torn, and the graze underneath was already beginning to smart and well with blood.

‘Oh,’ he said, too young and inexperienced to handle the matter. ‘I say, will you really want to do Madame Tussaud’s with that? We can always go home, you know. It’s not far from here.’

She looked again to judge whether the tear was very obvious and decided it was.

‘We could take a cab,’ Peter said anxiously. ‘Mother’s given me enough.’

‘Why don’t I stop off quickly and change,’ Beatrice said. She could find out if Rafe had called, and if he hadn’t, well, it would be miserable to sit indoors listening for the phone. ‘I’d like to see the waxworks.’

The cab drew up outside the house in Queen’s Gate.

‘I’ll wait here for you, shall I?’ Peter said. She hobbled up the steps, not needing to knock because the little maid had seen the cab and opened the door right away. She wore a curious expression on her sharp little face.

‘I’ll be going straight out again,’ Beatrice told the girl, keeping her coat, and on the way upstairs wondered whether the maid had been about to say something but then hadn’t.

She went to the bathroom and dealt with her graze, which was more extensive than she’d thought, but at least had stopped bleeding, and she was lucky to find a roll of plaster in a cupboard. Her stocking looked as though it might be repairable so she washed it out and hung it on the chair in her bedroom, before finding a fresh one in her case. All the while she was dogged by an awful sense of unease.

It was when she came downstairs that she noticed for the first time a military great-coat hanging on the stand behind the front door. She stopped still, her hand on the banister, thinking about this. Then, through the closed door of the drawing room she heard a man’s voice, low, followed by a woman’s careless laugh.

At that moment the little maid appeared downstairs. She was clutching a dustpan and started in surprise when she saw Beatrice. ‘Sorry, miss, I didn’t know you were there.’

‘Is there a visitor?’ she asked the maid, and again, was shot that curious expression.

‘Yes, miss, didn’t I say?’ she replied. ‘That man you kept asking about if he’d called. Well, he’s here.’

‘Is he?’ Beatrice cried. Rafe was here! ‘Why didn’t you tell me? How long has he been here?’

‘Miss!’ the maid warned. But Beatrice, who’d been waiting so long, was down the last few stairs and across the hall, pausing only briefly to knock before walking in.

Rafe and Angie were sitting together on the sofa facing the door. Angie was lying back, relaxing. Rafe sat on the edge of the seat, close to her, intimately close. His fingers were interlocked with hers. The pair looked up at Bea in surprise. Bea stared back at their intertwined hands. What were they doing?

‘Bea,’ Rafe said, loosing Angie’s hand and getting up. ‘I thought you were out. I mean—’

‘Well, I was. I’ve just come in. Actually, I’m going out again.’

‘How are you?’ Rafe asked.

‘I’m very well,’ she said.

‘Come and sit down, Bea,’ Angie said, almost purring. ‘What have you done with Peter?’

‘He’s outside in the cab.’ She explained what had happened. ‘I’ll tell him to come in, if you like,’ she said, getting up and going to the door, then hesitated. She still had that picture in mind of those hands, Rafe’s and Angie’s, intertwined. She didn’t quite understand, and yet she thought she ought to.

‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ she said to Rafe.

Rafe said, ‘I’m sorry, I telephoned and only Angie was here. She said to come and wait, so I did.’

She knew him too well. The slight blush, his look too steady. She wanted earnestly to believe him but couldn’t quite manage it.
Angie knew I wasn’t due back till late afternoon.
This fact was inescapable.

‘Are you all right?’ Rafe asked.

‘Yes, of course I am,’ she said.

‘Oh, this is silly. I’ll get Peter,’ Angie said, wrenching open the door and marching out. A moment later Bea heard the taxi move away and Peter followed Angie into the room.

‘Ashton,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you.’ He seemed nervous, as though the air were charged with a strange current.

‘I’ll order some tea,’ Angie said, stepping over to the bell. Later, Bea arrived at the exact word for the expression on her face. It was smug.

Rafe left around six, soon after Mrs Wincanton arrived home, greeting him with enthusiasm. ‘I’m afraid I’m due back on duty,’ he told her. ‘I’d have loved to stay longer.’

‘I’ll write to you, I promise,’ he said to Beatrice when she saw him to the door. After he’d left she leant against the front door and tried not to cry When she returned to the drawing room, Oenone and Angie were arguing about Angie’s social arrangements. Peter muttered some excuse and disappeared past her upstairs.

‘I hope Peter looked after you today,’ Mrs Wincanton said, taking off her gloves. ‘Oh dear, obviously not. What have you done to your poor leg?’ Beatrice assured her that she was all right and Mrs Wincanton went off to change.

Angelina was reading the
Bystander
and smoking a cigarette as though nothing had happened. Beatrice looked for signs of guilt or anxiety in her, anything that would give reality to the scene she’d broken in on that afternoon. Perhaps it was all some sort of dream, she thought wildly, or perhaps the whole thing meant nothing at all. Maybe it hadn’t to Angie, that would be typical, but she knew in her bones that Rafe would not have been acting lightly.

Just now, Angelina seemed more bothered by the fact that her mother had forbidden the outing to Quaglino’s. She threw her magazine on the floor with a sigh.

‘I’m quite sure Richard Bestbridge is not the kind of companion Mrs Marlow would regard as suitable for her daughter,’ Angie said, mimicking her mother. In fact, as Beatrice understood it, the reason was more complicated. Her mother had bought tickets for the Priestley play and booked a table for them all to have supper out first.

Angie yawned. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I can’t think why I’m quite so tired. Must be the thought of
Music at Night.
How did you get on with Pete earlier? Did he bore you to death?’

‘Not at all,’ Beatrice replied, a little stiffly. ‘He knows so much. It makes one feel very humble.’

She walked upstairs in a trance. Normally she’d have been enchanted to see a show, but not tonight. They got to the theatre somehow, but she hardly concentrated on a word. Her mind’s eye was on a more dramatic tableau. Angie, Rafe, those clasped hands, the adoring expression on Rafe’s face – yes, it had been adoring, she knew that now. Round and round in her head the picture went. She felt sick.

‘Are you all right, Beatrice?’ Oenone Wincanton asked her in the interval. ‘You look a little peaky to me.’

‘Just tired, thank you,’ she lied. ‘I’m really enjoying it.’

When she went to bed she locked the door again. The last thing she wanted was Angelina, coming in with her questions and her confidences. She lay awake for some time. Downstairs, doors opened and closed. There were footsteps and deep male voices, then Oenone’s laughter. She must have drowsed, for when she awoke, she heard the front door bang with a solid, final sound. More footsteps, people going to bed, then just darkness and silence. No, there was the slightest sound. There, again. Someone was trying the door of her room. ‘Beatrice?’ A male voice. Low. She said nothing and waited fearfully for whoever it was to go away. Eventually the floorboards creaked, and somewhere nearby a door closed. It was a long time before Beatrice slept, and then, it was fitfully.

She rose early, packed, and departed before breakfast. The letter she left Mrs Wincanton was brief but polite, her excuse admittedly a weak one, that she felt she ought to get home as she hadn’t seen her parents for months.

There were recriminations. Mrs Wincanton wrote her mother a hurt letter, saying she hoped they hadn’t offended Beatrice. Mrs Marlow wrote back apologizing for Beatrice’s rudeness and blaming her daughter’s being out of sorts on exhaustion.

Then, the day before Christmas, a letter arrived for Beatrice from Rafe. She took it upstairs and read it in her bedroom, her tears splashing onto the paper.

All Christmas she was not herself. Christmas Day passed in St Florian with the usual rituals, her mother attending early Mass before accompanying her husband and daughter to the Anglican service, then the fussing over a pair of pheasants Mr Marlow had been given by Colonel Brooker, and which he insisted that his wife carve carefully to pick out the shot. Beatrice pinched the palm of her hand, listening to his whining voice with a rising anger. How could she care about food when her world had come to an end?

‘Cheer up, won’t you?’ her father remarked as he served himself his wife’s famed duchesse potatoes and she rose, threw back her chair and ran out of the room. A few minutes later her mother found her sitting on her bed, staring dully at the floor.

‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’ she asked Beatrice. ‘You won’t say why you came home from London early and you’ve been rude and miserable ever since.’ The girl did not reply so she went back downstairs. Delphine didn’t know that her daughter held a letter hidden behind her back, the letter from Rafe. The phrases floated in Bea’s head.
It was wonderful to see you,
but also,
I realized when I saw Angie again the depth of my feelings for her. It was like a light going on in my head. Bea, I will always value you as my dear, dear friend who saved my life and has been saving it ever since with your friendship and reassurance . . .

‘Don’t you see?’ she wanted to shout at him. ‘She doesn’t really care, she just wants you to be in love with her. She needs adoration.’ It seemed so clear to Bea now. She hated Angelina for casually reaching out and plucking Rafe. Because she could. Because it was easy. Did she really despise Beatrice so much, or care so little for her? What could Beatrice do or say? Nothing, without losing her dignity. Nothing.

After a while she recovered herself sufficiently to go back downstairs. She resumed her seat under her father’s baleful glare and muttered, ‘Sorry.’

‘Our dinner’s getting cold, young lady,’ was all he said. ‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.’

They had been invited to the Brookers’ for tea and party games. Beatrice tried hiding behind the excuse of a headache but her mother, who was worried about her, insisted she come and be cheered up by Charades and Consequences. She wasn’t. After tea came the reading of a poem entitled ‘Bombers over Bethlehem’, written by another guest, Mr Cyril Thatcher, St Florian’s resident poet, which really proved the limit.

‘Much more of this, is there?’ Beatrice heard her father whisper to her mother and was relieved when they left shortly afterwards to walk home under the wintry stars.

In January she returned to school a different girl to the one who’d left full of bright-eyed expectancy before the holidays. Everybody noticed how withdrawn she was, how she took no interest in her work or anything.

‘Beatrice Marlow, we hardly hear from you.’ Her science teacher dragged her out of her thoughts. ‘Will you tell us the four types of Arthropod, if you please.’ Brought back to the reality of the chalk-dusty classroom, and the inquisitive eyes of the dozen other girls in black pinafores, she stuttered out an answer that was more or less correct, and the lesson moved on. But when the bell went, Miss Hardwick held her back and asked, ‘Is there anything wrong, dear? Such dark shadows under your eyes. Are you sleeping properly?’