The FitzOsbornes at War (54 page)

‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Dinner won’t be long.’

‘No, I can’t stay,’ she said, but she obediently took a seat. ‘You see, I’d been thinking about where Toby could go after his operation. Did you know there’s been another streptococcus outbreak in that awful Ward Three? Imagine if he got an infection – it would set him back
months
. I don’t think he should stay in that hospital a minute longer than is absolutely necessary, once he’s out of surgery.’

‘Yes, Sister Connor mentioned an RAF convalescent home that’s not far away,’ I said. ‘But Toby didn’t sound very keen on the idea.’

‘Well, he’s sick of living with dozens of men. Never any peace and quiet, no privacy. I don’t blame him. So I talked to a friend of mine who owns a cottage near East Grinstead. The tenants have just left and he said we could have it. It’s tiny, but there aren’t any stairs for Toby to have to manage and there’s a lovely little garden. It’s right on the bus route, too.’

‘I suppose
I
could go down and look after him,’ I said slowly. ‘At least, I could cook and clean and so on. I wouldn’t be much good at changing his dressings, though. I know it’s weak-minded of me, but I still feel a bit faint whenever I see blood. And I’m not trained in first aid – I’d be so afraid of doing the wrong thing and hurting him.’

‘We could hire a nurse –’ Veronica began, but Julia interrupted.

‘Oh, no, I meant
I
could move in with him. I could do all the dressings and help with his exercises, and then I’d just have to take him in to the hospital when he has his doctor’s appointments.’

‘But what about your job?’ I said. ‘You can’t take that much leave from the ambulance station.’

‘Well . . . I’ve handed in my notice,’ she said, avoiding our gaze and twisting the rings on her fingers in a very uncharacteristic display of nervousness.

‘You’ve
resigned
?’ Veronica said. ‘But Julia, if you leave the ambulance station, you’ll get called up!’

‘No, I won’t,’ she said. ‘Not if I get married.’

We stared at her.

‘Oh dear!’ she said, with a shaky laugh. ‘I feel like a young gentleman asking his sweetheart’s father for her hand in marriage. But I did want to make sure you were all right with it and . . . well, there’s your aunt to consider.’

‘Toby?’ said Veronica. ‘You can’t be serious.
He
can’t be serious! How can he
possibly
have asked you to –’

‘Actually,
I
did the asking. This time.’ She shot me a look, too quickly for Veronica to catch. ‘But he agreed with me. He always
did
plan to get married, eventually. And it makes sense to do it now – otherwise people will fuss about us living together at the cottage – and it’ll be easier for me to look after him properly if I’m his wife.’

Veronica turned to me in mute consternation.

‘Julia,’ I said, picking my words with care. ‘That all sounds very . . . sensible. But
marriage
is . . . I mean, what about love?’

‘But I
do
love him,’ she cried, ‘and he loves
me
, in his own way. We’re friends, really dear friends, we have been for years and years. And I’m tired of being alone all the time and, and . . . he
needs
me!’

Then the tears sparkling in her eyes spilled over, and I rushed over to put my arms round her.

‘Sorry,’ she said after a minute, wiping her eyes. ‘I really am happy about it. I wish you could be, too.’

‘Well, we are,’ I said uncertainly, with a glance at Veronica. ‘We’re just a bit surprised, that’s all. Didn’t you say you wanted children, after the war is over?’

‘I do,’ she said at once, ‘and there’s no reason why we can’t have them! It’s not as though he’s had some terrible spinal injury. He wants children too, he told me. And I thought
that
might make your aunt feel a bit happier about it. I know she dislikes me, but . . . do you think she’ll try to stop us going ahead with it?’

‘I don’t see how she could. You’re both of age, and you’re both of sound mind,’ said Veronica (although her tone suggested she had some doubts about the latter).

‘She
could
make things difficult, though,’ sighed Julia, ‘with money and so on. And Toby doesn’t need any more difficulties in his life right now.’

‘I honestly don’t think she
will
object,’ I said. ‘She might grumble a bit at first, but I imagine she’ll be very pleased he’s getting married at all. That’s part of why she’s been so upset about him – she thought the family name was going to die out.’

What she’d actually said to me at Milford last month was, ‘Oh, Sophia,
why
didn’t he take my advice and get married before the war? When he was handsome and charming and
whole
? What girl will want to marry him now that he’s so changed – now that he looks so
frightful
?’ But, of course, I wasn’t going to repeat that remark to Julia, or to anyone else.

‘Besides, Aunt Charlotte
doesn’t
dislike you,’ I told Julia firmly. ‘She’s very fond of your family. You have a title and money, so she can’t
help
but approve of you. And you’ve been so kind to Toby – to all of us – for so long. She ought to be
glad
to have you as part of the family.’

‘Oh, thank you, Sophie!’ Julia said, smiling for the first time that evening. She looked astonishingly pretty – and very young. I tried to remember how old she actually
was
. About twenty-eight, I calculated, a few years older than Toby and Rupert. ‘You really
have
put my mind at ease,’ Julia went on. ‘Toby will be relieved, too. But you mustn’t take
my
word for all of this – you ought to go and talk to him tomorrow.’ Then she chattered on for a few minutes about how long it might take to organise a registry office wedding and whether she’d be able to persuade her London housekeeper to come down to the cottage a couple of days a week. Then she had to dash off to have dinner with her father, who’d come into town to see his solicitor. ‘Wish me luck!’ she said.

I rescued my slightly burnt shepherd’s pie from the oven, and Veronica and I sat down to dinner.

‘Well,’ said Veronica, after we’d silently pushed food around our plates for a while, ‘it’s really only been
recently
that marriage has been connected with romance. Historically, it was all about alliances between families – everything to do with mutual advantage, and nothing at all with love.’

‘I just hope Julia isn’t being all self-sacrificial because she wants to atone for Anthony in some way,’ I said. ‘Although . . . no, I really believe she cares for Toby. And they
do
get on awfully well with each other. And oh, I nearly forgot! She’ll be a
queen
now, won’t she?’

‘For what that’s worth,’ said Veronica, starting to laugh, ‘when Britain is overrun by Socialists.’

‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ I said, shaking my head. ‘First Kick and Billy, and now these two.’

‘An epidemic of engagements,’ said Veronica. ‘I know
I’m
impervious to the disease – but I’m not certain about
you
.’ And she gave me a mock-stern look.

‘Oh, I think I’m safe for a
little
while,’ I said, with a smile. ‘At least until the war’s over.’

8th May, 1944

A
TALE OF TWO WEDDINGS.
First was Toby and Julia’s at Chelsea Town Hall. Toby looked very distinguished in his RAF dress uniform with all his medals, and Julia looked lovely in pale blue silk. A friend in the Air Transport Auxiliary had given her a torn parachute, and she’d dyed it and had it made up by a dressmaker to copy one of her old Paris frocks. She also wore a pillbox hat with spotted veil, white gloves, silk stockings and indigo shoes (Veronica and I had given her all our clothing coupons as a wedding present) and she carried a posy of violets that her mother brought up from Astley. The formalities, presided over by a lugubrious clerk with an eyepatch, were over in ten minutes, and then we all went to Claridge’s for a five-shilling luncheon. Neither Rupert nor Daphne had been able to get time off work, so the wedding guests were just Julia’s parents, Aunt Charlotte, Veronica and me.

It was a rather strained meal. Lord Astley was his usual gruff self, Lady Astley seemed sad and subdued, and Aunt Charlotte was still feeling affronted by the shabbiness of the registry office and the ‘insolence’ of the clerk (he’d referred to her at one stage as ‘Mrs FitzOsborne’). Toby responded politely whenever anyone spoke to him, but was otherwise silent. He’d insisted on leaving his walking stick in the car, and I suspected his leg was starting to hurt. He also seemed uncomfortable being surrounded by so many people. He’d spent most of the past four months in hospital, with only an occasional visit to East Grinstead (where, of course, everybody is quite accustomed to seeing men with severe burns). Here in London, strangers stared, or averted their gaze, or muttered behind their hands to their companions. One woman regarded him with undisguised revulsion, then hustled away her small child. I wanted to run after her and slap her stupid face. How
dare
she! For all
she
knew, Toby had shot down a Luftwaffe bomber aiming for her house! If it weren’t for him and hundreds of men like him, we could all be living under Nazi rule by now! I don’t think Toby saw that particular woman, but he couldn’t have missed all the others. For most of the meal, he looked as though he were trying to shrink back inside his skin, like a snail whose shell had been wrenched off, and he gave Julia a grateful smile when she said, ‘Darling, we really ought to be getting back now. You’ve an appointment with the physiotherapist at three.’

‘That,’ said Aunt Charlotte, after we’d waved off Julia and Toby, and then Lord and Lady Astley, ‘was the most dismal wedding I’ve ever attended. I still don’t understand why they couldn’t at least have had it in a
church
.’

‘It would have taken longer to organise,’ I said, ‘and it’s not as though either of them is religious.’

‘Religion has nothing to do with it,’ Aunt Charlotte said. ‘It’s about respect for tradition. Julia did it all properly for her
first
wedding.’

‘At least no one got shot at this one,’ said Veronica.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Aunt Charlotte distractedly. ‘It’s all been so
sudden
, that’s the problem. If only they’d had a longer engagement, then perhaps one might have been able to – Oh!’ She glanced about, then lowered her voice till it was nearly inaudible. ‘Julia isn’t . . . That is, she’s not in a
delicate condition
, is she?’

Veronica gave Aunt Charlotte an incredulous look, then said she had to be getting back to work.

‘Well, I wouldn’t mind if Julia
were
,’ Aunt Charlotte said to me later. ‘I’m sure they’ll have very attractive children. After all, Tobias
used
to be a very handsome young man.’

Then, just as I was about to snap at her, she added, ‘Oh, but Sophia, how I
wish
your dear sister could have been here to see this! She was always so fond of Julia. She would have been delighted by the entire thing – even that horrible little man at the town hall.’

So I couldn’t feel cross at Aunt Charlotte then.

The following week was Kick and Billy’s equally sudden wedding, held only two days after their engagement notice appeared in
The Times
. They’d hoped to avoid publicity, but no such luck. All the newspapers, here and in America, went wild – and that was nothing compared to the reaction of Kick’s parents after she told them of her decision. They’d bombarded her with letters and telephone calls and telegrams, alternately cajoling and threatening – but Kick refused to budge. I didn’t go to the actual wedding (another registry office affair), but Veronica and I attended the reception in Eaton Square. Kick looked radiant in pink and kept exclaiming, ‘I couldn’t be happier!’ Billy seemed pleased, but rather overwhelmed by the hordes – Kick had invited all the Red Cross girls and GIs from her club, plus apparently everyone she’d ever met in England. However, the only member of her family in attendance was her brother Joe. I’ve never really liked him, but I have to admit he’s been absolutely wonderful these past few months. He assured Kick that he’d stand by her, whatever she decided, and he did. When we saw him at the reception, he told us he’d grinned like mad at the newspaper photographers outside the town hall, ‘because they were going to snap away no matter what, so I figured I might as well look like I was having fun. My name’s ruined in Boston now, anyway!’ He was very funny about it. Then he went and fetched us a piece of wedding cake, and it was
real chocolate cake
. I hadn’t tasted anything like it for years. There was champagne as well, and some beautiful speeches, and then Kick came over and showed me what Billy had had inscribed on her wedding ring: ‘I love you more than anything in the world.’