The FitzOsbornes at War (41 page)

After he’d gone, and I was certain he wasn’t going to return, I threw myself across my bed and pretended I was Anna Karenina, a fallen woman abandoned by her cruel lover. I needed an excuse to cry. My emotions had been so tossed about over the past two days that I felt some ardent sobbing would help, and, not surprisingly, it did.

I think men would have far fewer problems if they learned how to cry properly.

11th July, 1942

H
ENRY HAS ARRIVED FOR A VISIT
. She’s also decided that she wants to leave school and join the Wrens. She announced this about two minutes after we collected her from the railway station this morning.

‘But I thought you
liked
this school,’ I said. ‘You’ve made all those friends, and you’re captain of the hockey team, and you even had a decent report at the end of term.’

‘For once,’ added Veronica.

‘Yes, and that means I’ve learned all I
can
there,’ Henry said. ‘Now I should be doing my bit for the war effort. I want to join the women’s navy.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Veronica. ‘You’re fifteen years old.’

‘Sixteen, in a couple of weeks!’

‘They don’t let sixteen-year-olds join up.’

‘They do! Jimmy wrote and told me about his friend’s cousin, who lives in Plymouth. She joined the Boat’s Crew Wrens, and
she
was underage! She just had to get her parents’ permission!’

‘Well, then!’ said Veronica. ‘You know what Aunt Charlotte thinks of girls joining the services.’

‘That’s how she
used
to think. She’s different now. She’d agree if you two talked her into it.’

Then Henry twisted round in the back seat of the taxi and directed her most winning smile at me.

‘No,’ I said.

‘All right,’ she said mildly. But we knew perfectly well that she wasn’t going to let it rest there. When we got home, she ‘unpacked’ (this involved upending her duffel bag over the sofa, scattering socks, fishing magazines and gnawed pencil stubs across our sitting room floor), then snatched a piece of paper out of the clutter and followed me into the kitchen.

‘Look,’ she said, thrusting a pamphlet under my nose. ‘They want girls who can sail, row and swim, and I can do all of those. And Wrens only need to be five foot three, and I’m five foot
seven and a half
! Plus, I already know Morse code.’

‘Where did you get this?’ I asked, taking the pamphlet from her.

‘There was a recruiting van parked outside the tea shop where all us girls go on Saturday afternoons,’ Henry said. ‘Did you know that women can be
officers
?’

‘Have you actually looked at this WRNS motto? It says, “Never at sea”.’

‘Some Wrens
do
go to sea! Like Jimmy’s friend’s cousin – she takes a motor launch out to the big ships to deliver supplies.’

‘It’s very difficult to get into the Wrens, you know,’ said Veronica, pulling cutlery out of the drawer. ‘You don’t even have your School Certificate yet. Anyway, I think you’re temperamentally unsuited for any of the services.’

‘What do you mean?’ Henry said indignantly.

‘Well, you’d have to follow orders, for one thing.’

‘I can follow orders!’

‘All right. I order you to clean up your mess in the sitting room.’

Henry rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, fine, I’ll do that later. Anyway, Wrens don’t do
housework
. They do important, useful stuff like coding and mechanical repairs. I could do that!’

‘Besides,’ Veronica went on, ‘they prefer girls who have relatives in the Royal Navy or the Merchant Navy, which you don’t have. Even if you did, you’d still need references from someone important.’

‘Really?’ said Henry.

Then she looked thoughtful, which is always an ominous sign.

Still, it
is
nice having her around. She’s so irrepressibly cheerful that it’s difficult to remain glum in her presence, and our clothes-shopping expedition this afternoon (no doubt, part of her Soften-Up-Sophie campaign) was a pleasant distraction from my worries, if only for a few hours. My anxiety over Toby is like a bad toothache that nags constantly, except for brief moments when I forget and bite down too hard, and it flares into agony. But there’s nothing I can do about that pain, except endure it.

My concern for Simon is different. It’s not as intense, and yet I feel more responsible for it, more
guilty
. I began wanting to check that he was all right almost as soon as he left the flat, but I didn’t feel I could contact him. Would a letter make him feel worse? How would
I
feel if he didn’t respond? So I was very relieved, a few days after Veronica returned from Spain, to find an envelope in our letter box addressed to her, in his handwriting. It was probably just some correspondence regarding Mr Grenville, the family solicitor, who’s arranging some London property purchases on Aunt Charlotte’s behalf. But it was a good sign that Simon was thinking about those sorts of practical, sensible things, surely? I tried not to look too eager as Veronica opened his letter – I didn’t want to prompt any awkward questions. All I’d told her was that Simon had visited while she was away.

‘Oh, he’s been sent off to do some new training,’ she said, scanning the letter. ‘Hmm. It doesn’t sound as though he’ll be going back to his old job after he’s finished his course, either.’

‘Right,’ I said, as though I knew all about this. ‘Well, he wasn’t very happy where he was.’

‘But I don’t know why he expects
I’ll
have time to meet with Mr Grenville this week,’ Veronica went on, frowning. ‘Absolutely typical of Simon. He always believes that whatever
he’s
doing has to be more important than any job of mine! When I’m so
busy
with all of this –’

But I didn’t hear the rest, because I was thinking of how I’d felt after Simon left. Sometimes it seemed as though his visit had been a particularly vivid dream. Surely it hadn’t actually
happened
? I could have dismissed it as a product of my fevered imagination, except for the fading finger-shaped bruises on my hip, where he’d grabbed me when I’d started to fall out of bed. And the scent of his hair cream, which lingered on my pillow for days. And the raw, tingling feeling of my skin whenever I ran my hands down myself, wondering if I could re-create the sensations he’d drawn out of my body . . .

So, perhaps I’d been wrong to regard the experience as insignificant, to assume I’d be unchanged by it. I wish there was someone I could
talk to
about it. Certainly not Veronica, not when it involves Simon. Anyway, I’m not sure someone who thinks pleasure is a waste of time and effort would understand what I was going on about. Perhaps Julia, if I didn’t mention any names . . . but no, she’d know exactly whom I meant. It would be too awkward, too embarrassing. And I couldn’t discuss it with Anne – she’d be shocked that I’d done anything at
all
with a boy without getting engaged to him first . . .

Anyway, I’m fine, really. If Simon is all right – if he’s busy with some fascinating new training course, if he’s managed to escape the job that had such awful memories attached to it – well then, I’m all right, too.

5th September, 1942

S
UCH HORRIBLE NEWS.
T
HE
S
TANLEY-
R
OSS
family have just learned that Charlie was part of that disastrous Allied raid on Dieppe last month. He was captured by the Nazis almost as soon as he landed and it seems he’s been sent to Germany, to some camp. That’s all the family knows – that he’s alive, that he’s a prisoner of war. They’re supposed to be grateful for that. More than a thousand Canadian and British soldiers were slaughtered in a couple of hours during that raid, with twice as many captured, and for what? For
nothing
. The rest of the Allied troops were forced to withdraw without achieving any of their objectives. They didn’t destroy any of the German coastal defences. France is still firmly under Nazi rule. If the raid was meant to divert German troops from the eastern front, to bring some relief to the poor besieged Russians, then it was an utter failure. How are we meant to win this war, when the Allied armies are so
useless
?

I wrote to Rupert, via Julia, but haven’t yet heard back. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He, at least, can’t be sent into combat. Can he? No,
surely
not.

Henry returned to school last week, but continues to bombard us with letters, pleading to be allowed to join the Wrens.

Veronica is so busy with her work that I’ve scarcely spoken with her for days.

Simon continues to pretend that I don’t exist.

There is no news whatsoever about Toby.

Also, I hate my job.

I hate my
life
.

16th November, 1942

T
ODAY, FOR THE FIRST TIME
in months, I woke up feeling happy. Or no – not
happy
, exactly, but I didn’t feel crushed flat by the leaden weight of my despondency. It was possible to sit up, to fling out an arm and throw back the heavy curtains and let in some sunlight. And there actually
was
sunlight – admittedly, rather weak and grey sunlight, but then, this
is
London. One can’t expect miracles (and if any miracles
were
being offered round, I certainly wouldn’t waste mine on brightening the weather).

I think it was the church bells that lifted my spirits. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed the sound of them. They’d been banned, of course, years ago – permitted to be rung only in an emergency, as a warning, in the event of the Germans invading. But an invasion seems far less likely now, after our definitive victory in North Africa. All the German and Italian troops there have surrendered, so Mr Churchill ordered the bells of Britain to ring out in celebration yesterday morning. Veronica and I sat on our front step to listen, the chimes floating towards us on the breeze with the last of the autumn leaves. It made me think of Sunday mornings at Milford, the congregation spilling out of the church doors, set free by the peal of the bells. It made me picture beaming brides with their veils thrown back, and infants in long christening gowns being held up to an admiring crowd.