A Gathering Storm (25 page)

‘Judy, darling. And Beatrice, what angels you look. Where’s Guy gone. Guy? Girls, this is Guy Hurlingham from the mess. Now what will you have to drink?’

Beatrice liked Dougie, whom she’d met on a previous occasion. Whilst he and Judy chattered away she shook hands shyly with the other man. Guy Hurlingham was tallish and well turned out, with a Captain’s pips on his shoulder and a musical lilt to his voice. He was a few years older than her eighteen years, with clever, slightly foxy features. His glossy dark hair contrasted with very pale skin.

He offered her a cigarette, which she declined, then lit his own with graceful movements. He had a quiet way about him which some people might have thought stand-offish, but which Beatrice sensed was only reserve. She wondered whether Dougie and Judy were deliberately pairing them off and felt a little annoyed with Judy for not warning her.

‘Are you on leave like Dougie or just up for this evening?’ she asked.

‘We’re both on twenty-four-hour passes,’ he replied. His voice was deep, almost gravelly. ‘Came up from Aldershot this afternoon.’ His smile was slow and serious, but no less genuine for that. ‘You’re billeted with Judy here, I gather. What sort of a place is it?’

‘The hostel? It’s two big terraced houses knocked together,’ she replied. ‘Rather a rabbit warren, with Matron prowling about like a vixen.’

‘You poor bunnies!’ he said and she laughed.

‘We’re pretty good at creeping past her. It could be worse. The place feels comfortingly solid in a raid. We sleep in the basement when it’s very bad.’

‘Which I know it has been. I say, it looks as though that party’s leaving. Shall we?’

They hurried to secure one of the plush banquettes that lined the red-silk-covered walls while Dougie and Judy trailed after with the drinks. The whole place was so wonderfully glamorous, Beatrice thought, liking the crimson velvet curtains and the burgundy carpet glowing in the low light. She was glad she’d come. The band was playing a slow number and several pairs of dancers were drifting about on the dance floor. Before long, Judy and Dougie got up and joined them, leaving Beatrice and Guy to guard the drinks. After a minute or two the music turned lively, and they had to sit quite close together on the sofa to hear one another speak.

‘I haven’t known Dougie long,’ Guy told her. ‘He’s a cheerful fellow, isn’t he? I enjoy his company.’ Being from Wales, he said, he didn’t know many people in London, though he hoped to look up an old school pal who’d written to say he was in Town.

Dougie and Judy were coming back now. They’d met some other friends, and soon there was quite a crowd roosting around their table. An extraordinarily beautiful Italian-looking girl with a sardonic expression perched on the arm of Beatrice’s sofa and talked to a stocky young Flying Officer, some story about her brother. Then she mentioned the name of a school and Beatrice couldn’t help interrupting to ask the young man, ‘You were there? You didn’t know anyone called Wincanton, did you? Their sister is a friend.’

The Flying Officer looked dismayed. ‘I should say I did. Ed Wincanton was in my year. You heard the news, I suppose?’

‘Yes,’ Beatrice said sadly. ‘Poor Ed.’

‘You know the parents, obviously,’ he said. ‘How did they take it? Badly, I expect.’

‘Awful,’ she said, and it rushed back, her meeting with Angelina, Oenone’s devastation.

‘And his brother was a couple of years below. Peter, I think his name was.’

‘That’s right. You haven’t come across him recently, have you?’ Beatrice asked. ‘No one seems to know quite what he’s up to.’

‘I remember Peter Wincanton,’ the Italian beauty cut in. ‘He came to stay with my brother once. I thought him rude.’

‘I don’t think he meant to be,’ Beatrice said. ‘He’s shy, you see.’

‘Most awkward. What does the father do now?’ the beauty asked. ‘Isn’t he in the government or something?’

‘I think he’s a Minister in the War Office,’ Beatrice said. ‘It’s a bit vague.’

‘Who knows what anyone does these days,’ said Guy, who’d been listening to the exchange. ‘No one will tell you anything.’

The band had struck up a popular number, and two by two the group peeled off to dance.

‘Would you like to?’ Guy said. Beatrice wondered if he was merely being polite.

‘I really don’t mind sitting out. I’ve two left feet, I’m afraid,’ she told him.

‘And I’ve two right ones, so we’ll match,’ he said, smiling. ‘Come on.’ They danced to two lively numbers before the music turned slow again. ‘Shall we try this?’ Guy said, and when she demurred he gently pulled her to him. She closed her eyes as they drifted dreamily. It was easy in here to forget the fear and the horror for a while, just to feel the music and the comfort of someone’s arms around you. Then she remembered he was a stranger and the feeling was lost.

When the song was over, they went back to their seats. The young Flying Officer from Ed and Peter’s school reappeared. The Italian beauty had vanished. Dougie started on some anecdote about a friend Guy and Judy seemed to know.

‘Would you like to dance?’ the Flying Officer asked Beatrice and it seemed impolite to refuse. Nick, she thought that was his name. He led her round the floor in an uncomfortably brisk fashion and asked her how she knew the Wincantons.

‘We were neighbours in Saint Florian,’ she told him.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ he said in her ear. ‘Peter. I didn’t like to mention this in company. A pal told me he’s doing something frightfully hush hush. His father got him the introduction. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s rather interesting if it is. Clara’s right, he is rather a strange chap.’

Beatrice resisted the temptation to pull away. Peter had to be defended. ‘He’s shy, I told you. And a little unhappy, I think. He’s always been rather kind to me, actually.’

‘Has he?’ Nick said, staring at her. ‘Well, I’m pleased to hear it. I’m sorry if I’ve said the wrong thing. I intended no offence, you know.’

‘None taken,’ Beatrice said, but knew she sounded cool. As soon as the dance was over, she thanked him quickly and started to walk back to her seat.

‘Air raid. AIR RAID. AIR RAID,’ a stout warden was hollering. ‘Out you all come, gentlemen and laydees. The fun’s over for now.’

There was a great fluttering as people searched for bags and coats and began to swarm to the exits. A few didn’t move at all. One couple continued to sway together on the dance floor, as if welded to one another, though the band had stopped playing.

Beatrice found herself caught up in a surging tide of humanity squeezing up the bottleneck of the stairs and out into the square, where they finally heard sirens. She saw Judy, briefly, a few yards away, but then she was borne out of sight by the crowd. Someone took her arm. ‘Beatrice,’ Guy said in her ear. ‘I thought we’d lost you.’

The atmosphere was surprisingly gay. A party in front were rather the worse for drink, the men joking and the girls shrieking with laughter as they stumbled along the road in the direction of the Underground.

‘Looks like we’ve lost Dougie and Judy altogether,’ Guy said, looking about.

‘I saw they were with one another, at any rate. Look, there’s a side entrance through here,’ Beatrice said, hoping it would be less busy, and she led them along an alleyway and then down a flight of steps just as the hooter sounded for ‘danger overhead’.

Down on the platform they had to step round the regular occupants, who’d already arranged themselves for the night. The atmosphere was raucous here, with singing and laughter. Eventually they found a few square inches of space in a passage and Guy folded his great-coat for them both to sit on. They waited together, feeling the air sucking and blowing about them, whether from trains or explosions, Beatrice couldn’t tell. Every now and then the whole edifice around them shuddered in a terrifying fashion and everybody would cry out in fear. Guy’s hand felt for hers and she clutched it tightly. When someone passed them tea from a Thermos, they shared the cup. Later, he put his arm around her and held her close.

After what might have been an hour the message was handed down that the all clear had sounded, and the more temporary residents started getting up and gathering their possessions. When Beatrice and Guy emerged into Leicester Square, it was to see that it had escaped the bombs altogether. And there were Dougie and Judy waiting for them where the railings would have been, had the authorities not taken them away for scrap.

‘We thought you’d spot us all right,’ Dougie said. ‘Don’t know what you think, but I’d say we’ve seen the best of this place tonight. Would you girls like to come on with us? We’re kipping with a pal near Manchester Square.’

‘I’m up for it,’ Judy said. ‘How about you, Beatrice?’

‘Is it far? What about Matron? We’d need to be able to get back to Bloomsbury afterwards,’ Beatrice said. They’d get a terrible ticking off if Matron realized they’d been out all night.

‘Honestly, that woman treats us like children,’ Judy muttered, but the complaint was half-hearted.

‘It’s only a little way north of Oxford Street, practically round the corner from you,’ Dougie wheedled. ‘We’ll see you get home safe, I promise.’

It was getting on for midnight when they stepped out of a taxi into pitch darkness. Tinny dance music swirled in the misty air and when a front door opened to disgorge party guests, a feeble yellow light was cast briefly across the pavement. Long enough for Beatrice to take in a terrace of white-painted houses, the end one on the left roofless, like a broken tooth, exposed to the sky.

Dougie knocked on the door of one to the right of the party house. There was no response. ‘Perry must be out,’ he told the others. He foraged under a window box, produced a key and got the door open.

‘He showed us where everything is so we’ll make ourselves at home, shall we? Ah, here we are, come in.’ They walked into a hall where the light didn’t work when Dougie tried it, and through a door to the left.

It had once been grand, Beatrice saw, looking round the drawing room with its crumbling plaster decoration and its faded velvet curtains. Now it smelt terrifically of damp, there was a great crack down the front wall, and the striped paper was dark with mildew. The music from the party next door ebbed and flowed through the dividing wall.

Dougie vanished and when he returned he held two half-bottles of whisky to his chest. Guy, meanwhile, set about switching on lights and an electric fire, and the girls were coaxed finally into unbuttoning their coats. Dougie splashed whisky into tumblers and sat on one of the sofas with Judy snuggling into him, while Guy and Beatrice shared the other. Guy brooded unhappily and Beatrice wondered how long it would be before she could go home.

After Dougie refilled everyone’s glasses, to Beatrice’s horror he pulled Judy to her feet and said, ‘We’re going on a wander. See you later, I expect.’

Beatrice and Guy listened to them tramping noisily up the stairs, Judy shrieking with laughter, then came the sound of a door slamming. Alone now with a stranger, Beatrice huddled into a corner of the sofa, unable to think of a thing to say. Guy cleared his throat and moved a little closer. He said, ‘Shall we? If you want to?’

It took her a moment to realize what he meant. She shook her head fiercely. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’

Guy looked relieved. ‘I didn’t think so,’ he said.

‘It’s just . . . not me,’ Beatrice stammered.

He smiled, all his nervousness gone, and now she thought how nice he looked.

‘Thank heavens for that,’ he told her. ‘I’m afraid I’m a bit out of my depth with girls like Judy.’

‘I’m awfully fond of her,’ Beatrice said, her face warm from whisky and embarrassment.

Guy lit a cigarette and said, ‘Dougie’s crazy about her. Bores us all rotten about it. Look, I heard you say earlier you hail from Cornwall. I know the place a bit. Used to holiday in Newquay with my aunt, in fact. Which part are you from?’

And Beatrice found herself telling him about St Florian and about her parents and her early childhood in France, and in return he described his upbringing on the Welsh borders near Hay, where his family were landowners and farmers. The lilt in his voice became more pronounced when he spoke of two elder brothers, of a little sister who’d died of meningitis. After boarding school in Malvern he’d applied for a commission a year or two before war broke out. His company, like Rafe’s, had been in France, and he’d been evacuated from Dunkirk, being picked up by a Hythe fisherman. ‘Forevermore I’ll associate the white cliff s of home with the stink of fish and oil,’ he said, with a smile. ‘But don’t think I wasn’t grateful.’

‘I have a friend who was in France.’

‘He’s alive?’

‘Yes. He was taken prisoner. But we haven’t had news of him for a long while now.’

There was silence between them. So much of this war was about waiting, about not knowing, Beatrice thought, and hardly daring to hope.

The music next door stopped abruptly, to be replaced by the sound of voices raised in argument, then a woman’s angry squeal. A door slammed and people spilled onto the street, where they talked and laughed and shouted goodbyes, then all was quiet.

Eventually, Guy said, ‘Oh, not again. Listen.’

Somewhere far away, the sirens were howling. Soon came the dull thud of bombs. This lasted for a tense few minutes, then there was silence.

‘It’s after two. I ought to get Judy home,’ Beatrice said, looking at her watch.

‘I’ll tell them.’ Guy went to holler up the staircase, and eventually Judy and Dougie reappeared, dishevelled and sheepish-looking.

‘We’ll walk you home, won’t we, Doug?’ Guy said, reaching for his coat.

Outside, the temperature had dropped several degrees further and the girls, tired and hungover, were soon shuddering with cold. Fortunately, when they reached the main road, it was to see a taxi drawing up. Two women fell out, and one began arguing with the driver until the other said, ‘Let’s give him what he wants, Kath, I’m beat.’ She slapped some coins into the man’s hand and hauled her friend away.

Dougie stalled the driver and snatched open the rear door. ‘Hop in, girls,’ he said.

‘Goodbye,’ Beatrice said to Guy. ‘I enjoyed this evening.’