Survivor (28 page)

‘To tell the truth, I was scared
he might look in my case,’
she
admitted. ‘I didn’t want to give him any ammunition against me. And
besides, I’m going to plot some revenge.’

Joan lit the fire, and they pulled the
two easy chairs up to it. Clutching a glass of gin each, mixed with some orange
squash, Mari launched into telling Joan about the day’s events.

‘So maybe this bloke ’Enry
might ’elp you get a job?’ Joan said.

‘I’m not even going to hope
for that. It’s enough that he knew my mum and liked Uncle Noah. Now, tell me
about Ian and Sandra? You said on Wednesday you’d had a letter from
them.’

Ian and Sandra were Joan’s two
children who had been evacuated. Like almost all the children in London, they had
been sent away in September of 1939. When no bombs fell during the Phoney War, many
children and mothers with babies started drifting back to London. But Joan had
resisted the desire to bring hers back because they were very happy in the seaside
town of Lyme Regis, and she felt it was wrong to uproot them. It transpired
she’d been very wise. When the first air raids came, the children who’d
returned were sent away again, and many people Mariette had met were very unhappy
about their billets.

‘Ian’s teacher says
’e’s clever enough to pass the eleven plus and go to grammar
school,’ Joan said proudly. ‘And Sandra come top in the class for
spelling. I think I’m gonna go down and see them next weekend. Mrs Harding
always lets me share Sandra’s bed, she ain’t the sort to put on any airs
and graces. She’s a good ’un.’

‘You are too,’ Mariette
reminded her. ‘So many mothers are jealous of the women who are taking care of
their kids, but you’ve been so grateful and generous with Mrs Harding, no
back-biting or trying to undermine her. I expect that’s part of the reason Ian
and Sandra are happy there.’

‘It’s flippin’ ’ard, though,’ Joan said thoughtfully.
‘Each time I sees them they’ve grown another inch. And they speak quite
posh now, they even ’ave napkins when they eat!’

Mariette laughed. ‘Ooh, I
wouldn’t allow that,’ she teased. ‘They might expect you to
provide some when they come home.’

Joan frowned. ‘I get scared that I
embarrass them, the way I talk an’ that. I’ve missed so much of them
growing up. ’Ow are they gonna be when they get back to this
shit’ole?’

‘They love you as you are,’
Mariette said firmly. ‘I came from a house in New Zealand with an outside
lavatory and no electricity. I’ve got used to luxury in St John’s Wood,
but I’d go home to my folks tomorrow, if I could, and never moan about not
having electricity. No one is ever like your own mum.’

It occurred to Mariette, that night, as
she tried to sleep in Ian’s lumpy little bed, that she really had learned how
precious her family were.

There would be no telephone calls now,
and it would be a few weeks before her parents got this new address to write to her.
She certainly couldn’t afford to telephone the bakery in Russell, even if it
had been possible to do that from a public call box.

But she must try to see things in the
optimistic way Joan did.

There had been no air raid tonight, or
for the last three days. And there was Henry to go to see on Sunday.

Joan had told her a job would turn up,
and perhaps she should believe that too.

She felt she ought to be glad she was
living close to Johnny too. But he had unnerved her at their last meeting, and she
wasn’t sure she felt the same about him any more.

Mariette had to ask for directions three
times to Willow Road before she finally found it. She had expected it to be right by
Hampstead tube station, but it was a good ten-minute walk away.

But she didn’t mind the walk; it
was sunny, the Hampstead air was a great deal fresher than in Bow, there were very
few bomb sites, and it was nice to see gardens bright with daffodils and lots of
trees. There had been an air raid last night, and she and Joan had gone to the
shelter. An old man with them was constantly scratching himself, and by the time the
all-clear went, around two in the morning, she found herself scratching too,
convinced she’d caught whatever was troubling him.

On examining herself this morning in
daylight, she couldn’t see anything on her skin, so it probably was ‘all
in the mind’, as Joan had claimed. She thought she must grow to be more like
Joan, laugh at such things, stop being so fussy about nasty smells and dirt, and try
to think of the strangers she met in shelters as potential friends, not treat them
with suspicion.

Number eleven Willow Road was a pretty,
double-fronted house with a high, neatly trimmed privet hedge which grew in an arch
over the tall wrought-iron gate. Henry must have seen her from the window as he
opened the front door even before she rang the bell.

‘You found me then,’ he said
with a wide smile. ‘I thought afterwards I should have given you
directions.’

He took her through to a large kitchen
at the back of the
house, overlooking a
well-kept garden, and introduced her to his wife, Doreen.

‘I’m so glad you felt able
to come today,’ she said as she shook Mariette’s hand. ‘You have
been through so much, and Henry tells me Noah’s stepson added to it by being
very unpleasant.’

Mariette had expected Henry’s wife
to be elegant and possibly chilly, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. She
looked very motherly, around fifty or so, plump, with her greying hair fixed up into
an untidy bun. She wore a hand-knitted jumper and a tweed skirt, and the apron over
the top had been washed so often that it was hard to discern a pattern.

‘He was even more unpleasant as I
was leaving. But I think I left him with some food for thought, along with all the
washing-up to do.’ Mariette grinned, liking Doreen on sight. ‘But I did
feel distraught as I walked away from the house. I had so many wonderful times with
Noah, Lisette and Rose, I loved them so much, and I don’t understand why
Jean-Philippe was so nasty to me.’

‘Noah had problems with him from
the age of about twelve. The boy was insolent, he purposely damaged things of
Noah’s and did everything he could to create a wedge between Noah and
Lisette,’ Henry said. ‘Noah asked me for advice because our son,
Douglas, is the same age. It was my opinion that Noah had tried too hard with the
lad when he and Lisette were first married. He meant well, of course, but he
overindulged him, never correcting him, and the boy came to believe he could do
whatever he liked.’

‘I only met him once,’
Doreen said, returning to some vegetables she was preparing. ‘Lisette and Noah
brought both him and Rose here for tea. He was objectionable, even then. I felt he
was jealous of his little sister and resented his
mother being so wrapped up in Noah. The whole time he
was here he went out of his way to upset everyone.’

‘I thought boarding school would
sort him out,’ Henry said. ‘But he just acquired even loftier ideas of
his own importance there.’

Doreen turned to her husband.
‘I’m sure Mariette wants to forget Jean-Philippe today. So why
don’t you take her into the sitting room and pour her a glass of sherry before
lunch?’

The sitting room had French windows
leading on to the back garden. It was an attractive room with large armchairs and a
sofa in a green and pink floral design. There was a huge glass-fronted cabinet along
one wall, full of china figurines.

Henry poured them both a glass of
sherry. ‘Here’s to the future,’ he said, chinking her glass with
his. ‘I dare say you are feeling a little daunted about it, this damned war
seems to be going on and on, and you must feel very alone now. But war often brings
opportunities that don’t come in peacetime, especially for women, I have heard
a whisper that Ernest Bevin is about to launch plans to mobilize women, letting them
take jobs that up till now have always been done by men.’

‘Really?’ Mariette said.
‘Well, that sounds good to me. I need another job, now that I have to pay
rent.’

She explained briefly about her job at
Greville’s, and about being a volunteer in the East End, and said that she was
now living in Bow.

‘A trained secretary
shouldn’t feel she needs to work in a munitions factory or shin up telegraph
poles. I know Noah wouldn’t have wanted that for you. Tell me, Mariette, did
your father teach you French?’

‘
Bein sûr, mon père me ferait
passer
–’

Henry cut her off. ‘OK, you can
speak it. Sadly, I don’t,’ he laughed.

‘I was saying that Dad would have
me speaking French
to him all day
sometimes. And Lisette and I had evenings when we spoke nothing else. She corrected
my accent too – Dad’s was more from Marseille, and she felt I should speak
Parisian. But why did you ask?’

‘I sometimes hear of colleagues
who need a bilingual secretary,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘I will mull
that over and see what strings I can pull.’

During lunch, both Henry and Doreen
asked her many questions about New Zealand. It seemed their son, Douglas, who was an
engineer, had a yen to emigrate there when the war was over.

‘It is a good place for a new
start,’ she said. ‘There’s so much space, beautiful scenery and a
similar climate to England, especially in the South Island. I think Douglas will
have a good life there. Why don’t you go with him? You’d love
it.’

‘It has crossed our minds,’
Henry admitted. ‘But it’s hard to uproot yourself at our age. But then,
as I often say to Doreen, if Douglas leaves England, there’s not a lot left
for us here.’

‘You’d soon make lots of
friends there,’ Mariette said. ‘So many people are from England, or
their parents were. I should imagine that a solicitor would get as much work there
as here too.’ She went on to tell them about how beautiful the Bay of Islands
was, about the sailing and the fishing, and how much she missed it.

‘You can handle a boat
then?’ Henry said.

Mariette grinned. ‘My dad thinks
I’m better than most men. He began taking me out in boats when I was as young
as three or four, and I was a strong swimmer from about the age of six. I think it
must be in my blood. Dad’s never happier than when he is in a boat, and
I’m the same.’

‘I wish I had had the good fortune
to meet Etienne,’ Henry
said.
‘Noah idolized him. He once said, “He’s the kind of man we would
all like to be – fearless, strong and formidable to anyone that dares cross him –
but he has such a tender side to him too. I put all my trust in him and never came
to regret it.”’

‘What a lovely thing to
say.’ Mariette’s eyes prickled with emotion. ‘But Dad thought the
world of Noah too. Since arriving in England, I’ve had the feeling they went
through something dramatic together, but I never got a chance to try to winkle it
out of Noah.’

‘I dare say that your father will
tell you one day,’ Henry said. ‘We parents have to wait until we see our
children are mature enough to deal with events in our past. Maybe, when the
war’s over and you go home, that will be the time.’

Mariette knew then by the way Henry
looked at her that he knew exactly what had brought Noah and Etienne together. She
wondered if he knew about her mother’s past too. But he was as stalwart as her
father and Noah, and she knew he wouldn’t reveal another person’s
secrets.

Mariette left Henry and Doreen about
five, somewhat reluctantly, as their home was bright and comfortable, the lunch had
been wonderful and they’d made her feel cared for. For a few hours she’d
been able to shelve her worries. But the moment she had to leave, and Doreen gave
her a goodbye hug, she was reminded that Lisette had always done the same, and she
felt a surge of grief again.

She knew she couldn’t hope to ever
replace what she’d had with Noah and Lisette. She had to grow up and take
responsibility for herself. Henry had the telephone number at Greville’s, as
well as Joan’s address, and Mariette had a strong feeling he would help her
get another full-time job.

The week following Mariette’s
visit to Henry was a
miserable one, with
the worst air raid to date on Wednesday night. She and Joan had been at the old
factory all day and were walking home when the siren went off. They hadn’t had
any supper, and the shelter they were forced to dart into was a really bad one.
There were just rough planks to sit on, a damp dirt floor, and the people already in
there resented a couple of strangers in their midst.

It was a terrifying raid. Each time a
bomb dropped, showers of dirt came down on them and the whole place shook. Mariette
really thought they were going to die that night, if not from a bomb blast, from
hunger, thirst or sleep deprivation. When the all-clear came at first light, both
she and Joan could barely walk, they were so stiff. Later, they were to hear that
there had been several hundred bombers that night, leaving 750 people dead; many had
died in a shelter that received a direct hit. But their most enduring memory of the
night was of two women going on and on about jam and marmalade being added to the
list of rationed items. Anyone would think jam was vital to the nation’s
well-being, the way they moaned about it.

‘I wanted to tell them to shut
their cakeholes,’ Joan said as they hobbled home, not even knowing whether the
house would still be standing. ‘If I’d ’ad a pot of jam on me I
would’ve stuck it up ’er arse.’

Johnny had turned up as they were having
a very welcome cup of tea. When Joan mentioned that she was intending to go to see
her children at the weekend, his eyes lit up at the prospect of Mariette being alone
in the house.

Perhaps it was because Mariette was so
tired that she snapped at him, ‘Don’t you get the idea that means you
can sleep with me,’ she said.

‘Believe it or not, I just thought
it would be lovely to be able to sit somewhere warm and snug with you,’ he
retorted
indignantly. ‘But the
chances are there’ll be another bad air raid, and I’ll be putting fires
out.’

He left a few minutes later, and
Mariette slumped down on a chair and held her head in her hands.

‘Why did I say that?’ she
asked Joan.

‘Because it was exactly what
’e was thinking,’ Joan grinned. ‘Oh, ’e covered it up well,
putting fires out was a great way to remind you ’e’s a blinkin’
’ero. ‘But ’e’ll be back, don’t you worry about
that.’

But Johnny didn’t come back. Joan
left for Lyme Regis on Friday lunchtime and Mariette went home around six, through
the rain, to a cheerless house. She lit the fire, made sure the windows were blacked
out and switched on the wireless for company.

There was no air raid, possibly because
visibility was bad. But it transpired, the next day, that the German bombers had
made for Plymouth instead and wreaked untold damage on the city, just as they had on
Bristol at the start of the week.

As Mariette sat staring into the fire
that evening, she thought about a woman she’d spoken to earlier in the day.
She was around twenty-eight, her fiancé had been killed in North Africa, and
she’d been living in lodgings a few streets away from the factory but had been
recently bombed out. Like Mariette, she was now staying with a friend.

‘I know everyone around here says,
“We can take it.” But I don’t think I can any more,’ she
said. ‘My mother died four years ago, my dad went in the last war without ever
seeing me. When I met my Sidney, I thought we could build a good, happy life
together, but he’s gone now too. I look around at all the destruction, the
hardships, and I know it’s only going to get worse. I ask myself what is the
point of carrying on? What for? I lost my mother and the man I love, I’ve got
just
the clothes I stand up in, nothing
else. I haven’t got the will to try to build a new life.’

Mariette had hugged the woman and given
her a pep talk along the lines of ‘you never know what’s round the
corner’. But the truth was, Mariette felt just as that woman did. Joan could
focus on surviving the war because of her husband and children. But Mariette’s
family were thousands of miles away, she had no one close left here. Even Johnny,
who, a few weeks ago, she’d thought might even be ‘the One’,
didn’t look as if he wanted to be her friend any more.

Henry was as good as his word. On 2nd
April, Mariette received a brief letter from him asking her to contact Mr Perry at
Prinknall and Forbes, in Chancery Lane. Henry wrote:

He could use a secretary who can also speak and write fluent French. While
most of his clients are English he has a few French ones, and he anticipates
more coming to him in the next year because of the situation in France. I
think this might be the perfect position for you.

After being interviewed, Mariette was
not so sure it was a position she wanted. Firstly, it would mean she would have to
leave Mr Greville. He might be a bit oily but she’d grown used to his ways,
and had even come to like him. Secondly, she didn’t like the bumptious Mr
Perry, who spoke down to her, one little bit. He was fat, with a red shiny face and
foul breath, and she couldn’t possibly imagine even sitting near him let alone
changing her initial opinion of him.

But she took the job because she needed
it, and it was easier to get home to Bow from Holborn than from Baker Street.

Mr Greville was unexpectedly pleasant
when she gave in her notice. ‘I half expected it,’ he said. ‘I
knew two days’ work a week wouldn’t be enough for you now. But tell me
about
the new job? I do hope you
haven’t gone for work in a munitions factory just because the pay is
good.’