Survivor (33 page)

On the third day, Ian asked if she was
their auntie.

‘Not a real auntie – I’d
have to be your dad or mum’s sister to be that. But I’m your auntie in
my heart. I’ll always care about you and keep in touch. Will you write to me,
Ian?’

He frowned, as if considering whether he
could promise that. ‘Yes, I will,’ he said. ‘But will you visit us
too?’

‘Of course I will,’ she
agreed. ‘I’ll be going back to New Zealand, when the war is over. But by
then you’ll be such a big boy, you won’t mind.’

‘I think I will. Mum said in one
of her letters that you were a special friend, so that makes you special to me
too.’

Mariette felt a surge of emotion and
hugged him tightly. ‘And you and Sandra will always be special to
me.’

‘How was it?’ Doreen asked
as Mariette returned from the funeral, just after seven in the evening, on Tuesday.
It had been raining all day, and Doreen took the black coat and hat a neighbour had
lent Mariette and hung them up to dry on the hall stand.

‘Terribly sad,’ Mariette
said, her voice flat and her expression strained. ‘The vicar said some lovely
things about the people who died, but seeing all those coffins together was too much
for everyone. Rodney – that’s Joan’s husband – was in a bad way. When we
went over to the pub afterwards, he got very drunk with Brenda’s husband.
Brenda won’t ever walk again, and when her husband overheard someone say it
would’ve been better if she’d died too, he got very nasty.’

‘People
mean well, but they can be so tactless sometimes,’ Doreen sighed.
‘I’ve heard some terrible things said at funerals. When my mother died,
her neighbour asked straight out if she could have her clothes. I would’ve
given them to her anyway, but to ask like that was like being a vulture.’

They went into the kitchen, and Doreen
made a cup of tea. ‘Did Rodney say when he was going down to see the
children?’

‘Tomorrow. That is, if he’s
sober enough to get the train.’ Mariette grimaced. ‘Poor man, I tried to
talk to him about Joan and the children. But I don’t think he was taking
anything in.’

‘These things take time,’
Doreen said. ‘He’s confused and hurting. I just hope he doesn’t
upset his children.’

‘That’s what I’m
worried about,’ Mariette said. ‘I told him they were very happy with the
Hardings, but he was nasty and said I knew nothing about his kids.’

That had been the most upsetting thing
about the funeral. She had hoped that Rodney would want to talk to her about Joan
and his children. She had intended to assure him she would keep in touch with them
while he was away and be like an aunt to them. He was a big, opinionated, thuggish
man, and one look at him was enough to know she wouldn’t like him. Yet she had
tried, reminding herself that he was grieving and that, under normal circumstances,
he was probably a very nice man. But it was as if he resented her surviving when his
wife had died, and he was suspicious of her interest in his children.

‘The vast majority of men know
nothing about their children,’ Doreen said with a disapproving sniff.
‘They go to work before the kids are up, return after they’ve gone to
bed. Many of them spend the evening in the pub. Maybe Rodney was different, who
knows? But even Henry had very little to
do with ours, when they were small. What about your
father, Mari?’

‘He was always around,’ she
said with a smile. ‘He changed nappies, walked us in a pram, shared the load
with Mum. I was often out with him all day from the age of four or five. I thought
all fathers were like him, and it was quite a shock when I found out they
weren’t.’

‘Then Belle was a lucky
lady,’ Doreen said. ‘And you make sure you find a husband like that
too.’

‘I’ll try,’ she said
with a weak smile. ‘I must write to my parents tonight. Tell them I got bombed
out and where I am now. Tomorrow it’s back to work. I’m not looking
forward to that, the other women there are so snooty.’

Doreen patted her on the shoulder.
‘Maybe they’ll be different now that you’ve been hurt and lost
your home.’

‘Somehow, I doubt that.’
Mariette laughed mirthlessly.

Mariette was right. The other women
showed neither interest nor sympathy. They just looked disdainfully at her brown
spotted dress, as if she’d crawled out from under a stone.

Mr Perry didn’t even bother to ask
where she was living now, or offer any sympathy.

She looked around the cramped, musty
chambers with stacks of bulging files and walls lined with legal books. She thought
it all looked like something out of a Charles Dickens novel.

She decided she would stay just a few
weeks more, to save up some money, and then she would leave the job and London.

Mariette watched the rain lashing down on
the tea-shop window and wished she’d ridden her bicycle straight home instead
of taking shelter in the tea shop. She’d thought it was only an April shower,
over in a few minutes, but now it looked as if it had set in for the rest of the
day.

She had moved to Sidmouth at the end of
January, almost three months ago, as a result of Mr and Mrs Harding inviting her to
spend Christmas with them and Joan’s children.

The long journey to Lyme Regis had been
something of an ordeal. The train was crowded, cold and slow, stopping at every
station. With all the windows blacked out, and the names on the stations removed, it
was a gamble whether anyone could get off at the right stop. Mariette had been
amused by people only waking up as the stationmaster yelled out the station name,
and then having a frantic rush to collect their luggage and parcels and get off.

But there was the spirit of Christmas on
the train, and all the passengers made a real effort to be chatty and jolly. Two RAF
men returning to their base on the coast had kept her entertained all the way down
with funny stories. As laughter had been in rather short supply since Joan’s
death, Mariette welcomed being taken out of herself. She happened to mention to
these two men that she wanted to move away from London, and they told her that Sybil
Merchant, the landlady
of the Plume of
Feathers in Sidmouth, was looking for help in her busy pub.

Sidmouth was in Devon, but it was just
along the coast from Lyme Regis. So, while Mariette was with the Hardings and the
children, on an impulse she caught the train to Sidmouth and went to the pub, to
check it out. She found Sybil every bit as warm and pleasant as the two RAF men had
said. When she was offered the job, she agreed then and there to take it. She had to
return to London, to work out her notice with Mr Perry and to say goodbye to Doreen
and Henry, but she was back in Sidmouth by the end of January. She fervently hoped
that a new year and a new home would herald a change in fortunes for both her and
England. On top of her own personal tragedies, world news during November and
December had been especially grim.

There had been the sinking of the
Ark Royal
, the ongoing siege of Leningrad, the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, the sinking of the battleships
Repulse
and the
Prince of
Wales
by the Japanese, and the invasion of Malaya and the fall of Hong
Kong. Then there were all the terrible stories of atrocities towards the Jews in
Germany and Poland, men, women and children just gunned down in the streets, or
forced into ghettos where they were starving. There were even whispers of
purpose-built concentration camps where Jews were being sent and possibly killed.
While no one seemed to know if the last was actually true, there was certainly
enough evidence of the savage ill-treatment of Jews to make it seem more than
possible.

Happily, there had been something of a
lull in the bombing of London, perhaps because the Germans were putting all their
energies into conquering Russia. It pleased everyone to read in the press that the
German generals had seriously underestimated the severity of the Russian winter as
they
marched on Moscow. It was reported
gleefully that German soldiers were lighting fires under their tanks in order to
start the engines, their machine guns were seizing up with the cold, and they
didn’t even have clothing that was warm enough for the sub-zero
temperatures.

The Americans declaring war against
Japan also gave everyone some hope that the war could be won. Winston Churchill made
an impassioned speech in December, saying that Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union
would teach ‘the gangs and cliques of wicked men’ a lesson that would
not be forgotten in a thousand years. Everyone hoped he was right.

But, for Mariette, all the horrors and
sadness of the previous year, and the uncertainty about the future, seemed easier to
bear when she got to Sidmouth.

Lyme Regis was quainter than Sidmouth –
it was really just a small village with only a few little shops – but Sidmouth was a
proper town with a school, a library, lots of shops, pubs, restaurants, cafés and
much more. Its residents weren’t hollow-eyed and gaunt from air raids, they
smiled at strangers, they stopped for a chat, and they weren’t fearful.

The gracious Regency houses on the
esplanade had been built as private holiday homes for rich and influential people.
In 1819, Edward, Duke of Kent, came to stay with his wife and baby daughter,
Victoria, who was later to become Queen. The house they stayed in had changed its
name to the Royal Glen Hotel, and it was now in use as an RAF convalescent home. In
fact, practically all the grand houses on the seafront had been requisitioned by the
RAF since the outbreak of war, but that hadn’t spoiled their charm or
beauty.

Mariette loved the winding streets of
small houses behind the seafront, and she enjoyed the peace and quiet after the
noise and tumult of London. She admired the carefully maintained parks and
people’s neat front gardens which,
although devoid of flowers in January and February,
promised an abundance for April and May. With seagulls whirling overhead, the sound
of waves slapping on the beach and the exhilarating tang of seaweed in the air, she
found her old optimism returning.

There were also long walks along the
spectacular cliffs to enjoy. Sadly, there was no harbour, but there were all manner
of small boats moored at the mouth of the River Sid, and she promised herself that
she would befriend anyone who had one for the chance to sail and fish again.

She fell in love with the Plume of
Feathers on sight because it had bow windows which, back in New Zealand, she’d
always imagined an old English pub having. On a cold night the bar was very
welcoming, with a big fire blazing in a huge old fireplace and the thick curtains
tightly closed. Most nights, someone would bang out ‘The White Cliffs of
Dover’ or other nostalgic songs on the piano, and everyone would sing
along.

Sybil Merchant looked and sounded more
like a farmer’s wife than a landlady. She was short, plump and rosy-cheeked
with an exuberant sunny nature. Ted, her husband, was tall and thin with a dour
personality. Sybil joked that they were Jack Sprat and his wife. On first meeting
with them, Mariette thought, as most people did, that they were totally ill
matched.

But Mariette was soon to realize, as
everyone eventually did, that the couple complemented each other. He was the still
waters to his wife’s babbling brook; he was the steady organizer, while her
warm personality kept their customers happy.

Ted had been gassed in the last war, and
he had problems with his breathing sometimes, which was why he came across as dour.
But however different they were in character, they clearly loved each other
dearly.

The instinct that had made her
impulsively accept the job had proved to be a sound one. From the first evening she
arrived, cold, tired and hungry, to
be greeted with warm smiles and concern for her, she knew she’d made the right
move. Her bedroom, although tiny, was comfortable and attractive. She knew, that
first night, she could be happy here.

Her role was to help out with whatever
was needed, whether that was cleaning, serving behind the bar, lighting fires, or
cooking breakfast for any paying guests. Time off was flexible, if she wanted to
visit the Hardings, take a walk along the cliffs, go to the cinema or a dance, she
only had to say. Likewise if, after a busy Saturday lunchtime, the bar needed a good
clean before opening again in the evening, Mariette would do it and leave Sybil to
have a rest.

As February slipped into March, her
birthday and the anniversary of Noah, Lisette and Rose’s deaths passed. She
saw bulbs coming up in the gardens and lambs being born in the fields around the
town. That seemed a sign to her that the horrors of the previous year were really
over. A new era was dawning, which would be happier.

She found too that she was actually
happier here than she’d been with Noah and Lisette. She had loved them, of
course – and Rose too – but she’d often felt that she was acting a part that
they would approve of. Living with Doreen and Henry had been much the same – always
needing to be polite, helpful, sunny-natured, never opposing anything they said.

She could be totally herself with Sybil
and Ted, and the ordinary people who drank in the bar, and that was liberating.
Along with the regular customers, there were many RAF men and WAAFs. She would flirt
a little with the men, and chat with the girls. She didn’t feel that she was
slightly inferior to them, as she sometimes felt with Rose’s friends, nor was
she accused of being ‘posh’, as she often was with people in the East
End.

Ted got Mariette a second-hand bicycle
so she could get
about easily. On a
sunny afternoon, when there was nothing to do at the pub, she would cycle out into
the surrounding countryside and along the coast to explore. Ian and Sandra had
become substitutes for her own brothers, Mr and Mrs Harding for her parents, and she
visited them every week. She often felt ashamed that she’d hardly ever played
board games with her brothers, or helped them with their homework. In fact, looking
back, she realized she’d taken very little interest in them. Yet now she was
thrilled to get a letter from them, and when Alexis recently sent her a snapshot of
him and Noel together in Cairo, she had wanted to show it to the whole world.

Back when she was about sixteen, Mog had
got really angry with her because she showed no interest in her family and avoided
being with them.

‘I almost hope that something bad
happens to you one day so that you’ll wake up and see how lucky you are to be
surrounded by people who love and care for you, my girl,’ she raged at
Mariette. ‘When you’re old, few people will remember how clever,
beautiful or talented you were. All they’ll remember is how you made them feel
about themselves. Right now, you make everyone you come into contact with feel
uncomfortable, dull and inferior. Just think on that, Miss Smarty Pants! Is that how
you want to be remembered?’

Mariette knew, of course, that Mog would
never really have wished a tragedy on her to make her appreciate all she had. But
she was right in saying that suffering certainly did aid the process. If Mog could
see her now, helping Sandra make clothes for her dolls, or taking Sybil her
breakfast in bed, unasked, or even glimpse her on her knees scrubbing the bar floor
while happily singing along to the wireless, Mog would be incandescent with
delight.

Yet the funny thing was, however much
Mariette longed to go home to see Mog and her parents, she actually wondered
if she could bear to say goodbye to Ian
and Sandra. She certainly wasn’t ever going to forget them, or their mother,
or indeed any of the people whom she’d grown fond of while here in
England.

She had been intending to ride up to
Lyme Regis later today to see the children, but the heavy rain had cancelled that
plan. But she had a newspaper, so once she’d read that, she would brave the
rain and ride back to the pub.

The little bell tinkled on the door, but
Mariette was too engrossed in reading about a ridiculous new government order – that
there could be no more wasteful embroidery or lace on ladies’ underwear – to
look up.

‘Mari!’

Her head jerked up at hearing her name.
Standing there in front of her was Edwin Atkins, the airman she’d been with on
the night of the Café de Paris bombing. He was with another airman, and both had
soaking wet uniforms.

She jumped to her feet in astonishment.
‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t believe it!
Edwin!’

She had often thought about him in the
weeks that followed the deaths of Noah, Lisette, Rose and Peter. She had been cut
adrift from life as she’d known it, and Jean-Philippe’s nastiness had
added to the feeling of isolation. She had Joan, of course, but she was so different
in every way to the family she’d lost. Maybe if she’d written that
letter, as she had planned to do, telling him where she was and what she was
doing … But she hadn’t, and that was partly because she was afraid
he might bring back memories of Rose, Noah and Lisette, and partly because of her
friendship with Johnny.

In the light of the way she’d
eventually turned Johnny down, it seemed quite absurd that she should have
considered his feelings. But back then, recovering from the biggest shock of her
life, and with everything seemingly topsy-turvy,
Johnny was a constant presence. He was there, as he had
been right through the Blitz, as a steady source of comfort, a light in a dark
place.

Then, after Joan had been killed and
Johnny had left, while she was living in Hampstead, she just felt too low in herself
to think of ringing or writing to anyone other than her family.

But now Edwin was standing in front of
her in a little Devon tea shop, and it felt like the most fantastic and outlandish
stroke of good fortune.

‘I was celebrating this young
lady’s twenty-first birthday at the Café de Paris, when it was bombed,’
Edwin explained to his companion, a short fresh-faced man he introduced as Tim
Warberry. ‘How wonderful to see you, Mari! And in such an out-of-the-way spot!
What on earth are you doing here?’

Mariette said that she was working in a
pub in the town. Edwin still looked astounded, but both men sat down at her table
and Tim ordered tea and cake for them all.

‘I tried to ring you after the
funeral,’ Edwin said, once the waitress had taken the order. ‘But
Rose’s brother said you’d left. He was very short with me. Did you upset
him in some way?’

‘No, but he upset me badly by
telling me to leave immediately. He did let me stay for the funeral, in the end, and
I left that same evening,’ Mariette said, then went on to tell him a little
more about how Jean-Philippe had only contacted people he thought were important,
not the family’s closest friends. ‘I wanted to phone you. But, quite
honestly, that unspeakable man crushed me so much that I would only have blubbed to
you, and you didn’t need that.’