Darkest Before Dawn (43 page)

Groaning, he leaned down and pulled the thin and filthy blanket over himself because, as night drew on, the temperature would drop and the hut would become freezing cold. Sleep, sleep, sleep, you fool, he urged himself. You've got to sleep or you won't be able to work tomorrow. If you don't work, you won't eat and if you don't eat, you'll die. Sleep, damn you, Toby Duffy.

He slept, and for the first time since leaving Changi, he dreamed of home. There was a girl, very beautiful, very loving. They were down by the canal, wandering along in autumn sunshine. There was a wood; they gathered hazelnuts, filling their pockets, laughing at one another's attempts to reach the higher branches. There were blackberries, rich and glossy. The girl scratched her fingers, trying to reach the best and biggest, but they continued to pick until the basket she held was full. Then they were on the canal boat, the good old
Mary Jane
, and a wonderful smell of rabbit stew came drifting up to where they sat on deck. Presently, they went below and ate the stew, accompanied by big, floury potatoes and followed by an apple pie. Then, as the sun sank in the west, he and the beautiful girl wandered along the towpath beside the great black horse, and they talked of school, and recited poetry to one another, and laughed a lot.

When he awoke, Toby could not believe his surroundings: the bamboo hut, the muddy floor, his own arms and legs, skeletally thin, looking totally unlike the self that he remembered. But he had slept, and slept well, and all through the terrible and exhausting day which followed there was a quiet pool in his mind. He had escaped from this hell on earth for the entire night, and now he remembered again that he had a great deal to live for.

When they stopped for a brief break in the work, he told Miles about the dream and Miles looked at him curiously. ‘Was it the girl who married someone else?' he asked bluntly. ‘Serena, isn't that her name?'

‘No, she's Seraphina,' Toby said. ‘I can't swear to who it was because I never saw her face clearly, but I think it must have been her. After all, we shared so much. Fee and I went blackberry picking, nutting, digging for potatoes, trapping rabbits . . . oh, we were up to all sorts when we were young. The second sister, Angela, hardly ever came with us, but the kid did. Evie, that is.'

‘Evie? I've heard you mention that name before,' Miles said thoughtfully. ‘She wrote to you when you were in Changi, didn't she?'

Toby felt a stirring of affection inside him at the thought of those bright and breezy letters, coming so regularly. ‘That's right, and I bet she writes every week, still,' he said, getting to his feet at the sound of a screamed order from outside. ‘She's a broth of a girl is Evie; she's not pretty, got a face like a monkey, but you can't help liking her.' He turned to the doorway. ‘Coming, coming, you little yellow bastard,' he said.

The sisters assembled in the flat above the grocer's shop on 21 November. Seraphina and Evie had spent the night on the living-room floor in order that Angela could share her mother's bed, and had been glad of all the extra blankets Martha could provide, because it was extremely cold and at floor level it was impossible to escape from the draughts. Angela was more excited than either her mother or her sisters had ever seen her before, and Seraphina, who had very nearly decided to give the wedding a miss, was glad that she had not done so. Her sister was alight with happiness, deeply in love with a tall, thin, rather serious young man, and ecstatically happy at the thought of becoming a wife and, in the fullness of time, a mother.

Seraphina envied Angela because she was about to marry a man she truly loved, and who truly loved her, but the reason Seraphina had considered missing the wedding had nothing to do with envy. The fact was, she herself had fallen in love without even realising what was happening, and though Pilot Officer Eddie Harding had begged her to think about applying for a divorce, she still could not bring herself to do anything so definite. She knew that she had mistaken her feelings for Roger when she had agreed to marry him; these had not been love but a sort of crazy infatuation and, she now admitted, a desire to punish Toby for not appreciating her. Yet marriage to Toby would have been another enormous mistake, for looking back she could see that their friendship had been just that: friendship and nothing warmer. If she had continued to live on the
Mary Jane
, they would have drifted apart, but because she had moved away he had somehow glamorised his picture of her and decided they meant more to each other than they actually had done.

Seraphina, getting dressed slowly and carefully in her Number Ones, thought that human relationships were a lot more complicated than she had ever dreamed. Once she had believed she could only love an outstandingly handsome man – Toby was very handsome, though in a quieter and less obvious way than Roger – but Eddie was not handsome at all. He was of medium height, stockily built – she had always liked tall men, six footers – and he had curly, bright ginger hair, white eyebrows and eyelashes, eyes as green as gooseberries, and a broken nose, sustained during a game of rugger before the war. No one, not even Seraphina herself, could have called him even passably good-looking, let alone handsome, yet she knew that he was everything she had ever wanted. He made her laugh, taught her more than she had dreamed there was to know about aeroplanes, took her out in the unreliable old sports car which he shared with three other young officers, teased her, cuddled her and made her feel both loved and desired, which was more than Roger had even attempted to do.

And now that she was loved, she felt truly sorry for Roger and wished there were some way that their marriage could be ended without hurting him. After all, he had been as deluded as she over their relationship, for she was still convinced that, had he truly loved her, he would have been able to cope with the physical side of their union without effort. For some reason, though, he had found that part of marriage distasteful, and now he was as trapped as she, and probably as desperate to escape.

Once, the thought of all the pitfalls that lay ahead would have terrified Seraphina, made her edgy and cross, difficult to live with. But because she had Eddie, she found she could contemplate what faced her with equanimity. She had never slept with the young pilot officer, nor did she intend to do so, but as soon as the war was over she would apply for a divorce and then she and Eddie meant to go far away, to Australia or Canada perhaps, and start their lives anew, leaving Roger to tell whatever story suited him best, without fear of contradiction.

Seraphina's thoughts were interrupted when the living-room door burst open and Evie's head poked round it. ‘Are you ready?' her sister said, but did not wait for a reply. ‘Can I have a word, Fee? Only there's something that's been worrying me . . . and brekker isn't ready yet. Mr Wilmslow got some bacon – don't ask where from – so it's bacon and scrambled eggs in ten minutes.'

‘Come in, then, if you want to talk,' Seraphina said, drawing back the curtains and rolling up her bedding, pushing it out of sight behind the sofa. She looked searchingly at the younger girl. ‘Are you all right, Evie? You looked strained and pale yesterday, when I arrived home, but I thought you just needed a good night's rest. Only you still don't look like your cheery self.'

‘I'm fine,' Evie said hurriedly. ‘Well, I've – I've had some rather nasty dreams . . . oh, Fee, if you'd just let me explain . . .'

‘Fire ahead,' Seraphina said. She hoped very much that Evie was not going to question her about Roger. Her youngest sister was extremely sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others. If anyone had picked up on the fact that something was seriously wrong with the Trueloves' marriage, it would be Evie, Seraphina knew.

However, it was neither Seraphina nor Roger of whom Evie wanted to speak. ‘It's . . . it's Toby,' Evie said, rather hesitantly. ‘You know I've been writing to him for ages, don't you? Well, some time last month, two of the girls I work with took me to see this woman, Mrs Smith, who said she was a psychic . . .'

Seraphina listened while her sister outlined the story, then raised her eyebrows enquiringly. ‘Well, if you didn't believe her, why have you told me all this?' she said, rather plaintively. ‘Toby hasn't written to me any more than he has to the rest of you. Indeed, I'm sure . . .'

‘No, no, that isn't what's worrying me,' Evie said hastily. ‘You see, I told Mam, and she agreed with me, that Toby would likelier get in touch with someone he knew and loved, rather than with a complete stranger. She said to try thinking about him and sending him good thoughts – happy ones, you know, of better times – so I did that . . . well, I still do it, to tell you the truth. Every night, after I've said my prayers, I think about happy times on the canal and scrumping trips into farmers' orchards, and fishing for tiddlers with a flour bag on a split cane . . . all sorts.
You
know, Seraphina.'

‘You are a kind little soul, Evie,' Seraphina said gently. ‘I'm sure if anyone can get in touch with Toby, you can. But you mustn't do it if it worries you and makes you ill, though why it should I'm not sure,' she finished candidly.

Evie took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. ‘It didn't upset me, not at first,' she said slowly. ‘But lately, it's a bit as though I was getting little flashes of where Toby is and what he's doing, and – and it's awful, Fee, really awful. There's jungle, and horrible insects, and a trench with nasty things in, crawling with maggots. Tiny, flimsy huts and snakes which wriggle out from under your foot, and beastly things like crabs or lobsters, only smaller, with curled over tails. If they sting you, you die. And there's other things, worse things. Small, squat men, with yellowish skin, hitting out with sticks and rifle butts and bayonets, anything.'

Seraphina stared at her sister, appalled. If Evie was having dreams like that, no wonder she looked pale and ill. It was all imagination, of course, but even so, she could see Evie was truly worried by the dreams, as indeed anyone would have been. But how to stop them? And now she came to think of it, it was downright weird that Evie should go off to sleep whilst thinking of the happy times they had enjoyed in the past, and then have ghastly nightmares. Evie was staring at her, clearly hoping for some sort of resolution of her problem. Seraphina sighed. ‘You do know they're only dreams, don't you? In other words, your imagination is running away with you. If I thought the dreams would go away if you stopped – well, stopped trying to get in touch with Toby, then I'd advise you not to send him happy thoughts, but it can't possibly be that.' She stared rather helplessly at her sister. ‘Have you been reading up about Singapore?'

Evie nodded. ‘Yes; and not just Singapore. I've been reading up about all those countries, the ones between Singapore and India, I mean, because I always listen to any programme on the wireless about the war in the Far East, and an awful lot of people who know the area think the Japs will try to reach India, conquering as they go. You see, Toby might have escaped and then been recaptured, up country somewhere . . . there's a railway, you know . . .'

Seraphina's face cleared. ‘Well, there's your answer, queen. You've read so much about it that it's become real to you, and because it's such extremely unpleasant terrain, it's somehow got into your dreams. Perhaps you ought to get something really light and cheerful out of the library – Dornford Yates writes awfully funny books, you'd like them – and try to steer clear of the more frightening programmes on the wireless. There's a lot of entertainment specially provided to take one's mind off the war; stick with that.'

‘All right,' Evie said, rather doubtfully. ‘And – and thanks, Seraphina.'

Soon after that, it was time for the family to make their way to the church where they watched an ecstatically happy Angela exchanging vows with an equally happy Albert. Then they went on to the church hall where Mrs Bunwell and Mrs Baldwin had been hard at work for hours, setting out food on trestle tables. Martha had not wanted to buy on the black market, and she and Mr Wilmslow had done their best, but in the end she had been approached by Percy, who had offered tinned fruit for the trifles, a quantity of sausage meat to be transformed into sausage rolls, lard for the pastry and three pounds of dried fruit for the concoction of the cake. Martha had opened her mouth to say that she could manage without illegal goods, but had felt ashamed when she saw the pleading look in Percy's eyes. ‘It's me wedding present to your Angie,' he had said humbly. ‘It's a gift, Mrs T. You were real good to me when I were a kid and I ain't never forgot the wrong me dad did to Mr Todd. I wanted to give your Angie something and I reckoned this might be more useful to the whole family than half a dozen pairs of silk stockings or a hundred Woodbines.'

Martha had laughed but had accepted his generosity and now, looking at the number of people crowding into the church hall, she was devoutly glad she had done so. For the past three weeks, she had been cooking and contriving, and it seemed that her hard work had paid off, judging by the appreciative murmurs as her guests saw the spread set out before them.

Martha hurried over to where Mrs Baldwin and Mrs Bunwell were pouring tea into the thick white cups provided by the hall. ‘You've done a wonderful job and I'm really grateful,' she told them. ‘But now you must let Seraphina, Evie and myself take over whilst you join the other guests. Where's Percy, Mrs Baldwin?'

‘He's in the kitchen refilling the kettles and putting them on the gas,' Mrs Baldwin said. ‘If you're sure, Mrs Todd, me and Mrs Bunwell here would like to have a word with the bride. What a shame she couldn't wear white – she would have looked a real picture – but most brides wear uniform these days and she's in such a glow . . . well, I've never seen her look lovelier.'