Facing the Light (19 page)

I can't help it, she decided, and wondered what she had to do to make Peter Simmonds fall in love with her. He was so much older than she was. Perhaps it would be impossible, but she was going to try her hardest.

She'd made herself indispensible: reading to Peter when he was feeling low; playing card games with him and his chums, Georgie, Freddy and Mike; listening to him talk for ages about terrible things that he'd seen. They'd walked for hours in the Quiet Garden, where the pale
roses planted by her mother grew against a sun-warmed wall, and the borders were crowded with pink and mauve and palest blue delphiniums and lupins, hollyhocks and snapdragons, and edged with white alyssum.

‘My mother hated bright colours,' Leonora told him, and they sat on the bench built round the magnolia tree and breathed in the peace while he told her the hideous details of everything he'd seen happening all round him.

‘I shouldn't speak to you about it, Leonora. It's not fair. You're only a kid and you ought not to hear about, well, about what goes on out there in the world.'

‘I'm not a kid!' Leonora said, and nearly contradicted herself by bursting into tears because that was how he thought of her. How he still thought of her, after all these weeks. She'd wanted to tell him how she felt a hundred times and then funked it. Instead, she lay in her bed every night, too hot under the bedclothes, and daydreamed about kissing him and what it would be like. She'd kissed a boy last Christmas at a party – Nigel Drake, who was quite nice but who didn't make her tremble or blush when she thought of him. The kiss was all right, once she'd got into it properly, but Nigel was obviously not used to girls and hadn't known what to do with his hands, which just hung down at his side. Leonora knew from films she'd seen that he was supposed to put his arms around her, but she was so preoccupied with wondering what she thought about having his moist, rather rubbery lips clamped to her own that she didn't think she could mention it.

Peter's kisses would be different, she was sure of it. When she wasn't at his side, Leonora spent hours playing with her dolls' house. She'd stopped doing that ages ago, but since his arrival at Willow Court, it was a way of bringing her deepest and most cherished fantasy to life.

She pretended that the house was their house, hers and Peter's after they were married, and moved the dolls
around it in a dream of what living with him would be like. One day, greatly daring, she put the man doll and the lady doll together under the covers on the biggest bed. As soon as she'd done it, she closed her eyes and imagined that it was them, her and Peter, naked under the bedclothes, then touching, and she felt a strange, melting, soft feeling somewhere inside her which she'd never ever felt before, something that nearly hurt, but didn't.

‘You're a bit too old to be playing with that, I'd say,' Nanny Mouse said, coming into the room unexpectedly. Leonora's eyes flew open and she moved the lady doll from the bed to another room before Nanny spotted her.

‘I'm not playing with it, not really,' Leonora said, getting to her feet. ‘I was just making sure it was tidy, that's all.'

Nanny Mouse looked searchingly at her and changed the subject.

‘Your father's expecting you for lunch,' she said. ‘You know he doesn't like to be kept waiting.'

Then one day, while they were sitting in the conservatory, Peter said, ‘I'll miss these times with you, Leonora. When I go. You've saved my life.'

She looked at him and wanted to say so many things but the words dried and shrivelled in her mouth. She couldn't speak. She ought to say something like
it's such good news that you're well enough to leave
and all she could think was
don't go. Stay with me. What if you're sent back to the war and killed? What'll become of me then? Oh, stay … please please stay!

At last she managed, ‘When? When will you have to go?'

‘This evening, I suppose. Maybe tomorrow. My mother's sending a car to fetch me. I really ought to go and convalesce at home. I'm all she's got left now since Dad died, and she's not very well. I … I will miss you so
much, Leonora …' His voice faded as though he couldn't think of the right words. They were sitting next to one another on the ancient sofa that had been moved into the conservatory from the drawing room to make space for the beds. He turned to her. Leonora could see he was hesitating. Silence filled the space all around them and the sun beat down on the glass panes and made golden squares on the tiled floor. Someone looking into the room from the hall wouldn't see them, Leonora knew. The plants were in the way. They were quite alone. If she didn't do it now, if she hesitated for even a moment longer, he'd be gone and she'd never see him again. She put out both hands and pulled his face close to hers.

‘I wish you could stay,' she said, and then, ‘Please kiss me, Peter. Please.'

His eyes widened. His face was so close to hers that she could almost count his eyelashes. He kissed her, and she breathed in his smell, and tasted his mouth on hers and felt the hardness of his arms on her back, pulling her into the heat of his body. More. She wanted more. She wanted it never to stop, this kiss, but it did and she found she was crying. Peter suddenly pulled away from her, and sprang to his feet and moved towards the door.

‘I'm sorry,' he said, and pushed his hair away from his forehead. ‘So sorry. You're just a child, Leonora. I had no right. Please forgive me. I don't know what came over me. I'll say goodbye now. So sorry.'

He'd gone before she could answer and she rushed after him.

‘Peter! Please, Peter, stop. Where are you going?'

They were in the hall. At any moment, someone – another patient, Sister, even Daddy himself – might interrupt them. She took his hand. ‘Come on,' she said. ‘Let's go to the gazebo.'

She almost pulled him out of the front door and they walked slowly over the lawn together.

‘We might be seen, you know,' Peter said, out of breath and leaning against the glass wall.

‘I don't care,' Leonora answered. ‘You're going away and I may never see you again. I couldn't just let you go like that. Come inside.'

The moment they were safely in the gazebo, she flung her arms round Peter's neck and burst into tears.

‘Oh, Peter, don't go. What will I do? I'll die. Can I come with you? Oh, please say you won't go. Please …'

She felt him breathing; felt his arms encircling her and they stood clinging to one another until her crying subsided a little.

‘I'm sorry,' Leonora whispered at last. ‘I expect you think I'm a dreadful baby. I know you have to go back to your regiment. Only it's awful because I love you so much. I'll never, ever love anyone ever again, so I can't bear it if you never come back.'

She stopped speaking and looked down at the floor. ‘I shouldn't have said that, I expect. You'll think I'm very forward.'

‘Oh, Leonora, if only you knew!' He turned her face up to his. ‘If you knew how much
I
loved
you
. How hard it's been not to tell you, all this time.'

‘You should have told me. Why didn't you? Oh, Peter!' She nearly started crying all over again.

‘I thought that if I told you, it would be, well, like lighting a fuse. I don't know whether I'd have been able to keep myself under control. You're so young, Leonora. Not even fifteen, and I'm seven years older.' He laughed ruefully. ‘I had to behave myself, don't you see? You're nothing but a child.'

‘I'm not. I'm not a child and even if I am, I shan't always be one. I'll grow up soon. I'll wait for you, Peter. And I want to write to you. May I write to you?'

‘Will you? Really? And wait for me, too? Oh, my darling, I'll come through anything this bloody war can
throw at me if I can believe that. I'll write to you every day. I'll write from home and from wherever they're going to send me when I'm a hundred per cent fit. Oh, Leonora, kiss me again.'

They stayed in the gazebo until it was time for Peter to collect his bags and wait for the car. Leonora's mouth was swollen from their kissing and she went straight from the gazebo to her bedroom. When Nanny Mouse came to call her for dinner, she said she didn't feel well, and stayed in bed until she was sure Peter had gone. She jumped out of bed every time she heard a car, and she watched him leave. She only half heard the song that someone was playing downstairs, but she registered the fact that it was Duke Ellington's ‘Mood Indigo', and the tears she'd been holding back started to fall at last. She buried her face in her pillow and wept and wept. How would she ever be able to listen to those swooping sounds again without remembering? When at last she ventured downstairs, Georgie gave her a letter Peter had left for her. That was the first letter she learned by heart, and it was the first she'd hidden in the dolls' house.
No one knows what will happen, Leonora my darling. If I survive this war, I'll come back and we will love one another for ever and ever. I promise
.

She could bear time passing. She could face every day because of the letters. Then, three years ago, they had stopped arriving. Leonora refused to think of why he might not have been able to write, and went through the motions of her life. She met other young men, but they all seemed dull and uninteresting by comparison with Peter. She went to dances, and tennis parties in the summer and found herself dreaming of Peter even while she was talking to other people. It was no good at all. There would never be another man ever again whom she could love, and she even said so once to Bunny, in an unguarded moment. Bunny was having none of it.

‘Nonsense,' she told Leonora. ‘Someone will catch your eye one day. It's ages and ages since you heard from Peter, and you ought to face up to it, you know. He may never come back. I expect it might take longer for you to find someone, because you're more particular than the rest of us, but I'm sure you will in the end.'

Leonora hadn't said a word, but she knew that Bunny was wrong. If Peter never came back, she would grow into a wrinkled old maid, never having known what it was like to make love to a man, to have children, to share a life with someone else.

She was so absorbed in her memories that she jumped when she heard Ethan speaking just behind her.

‘What's that you're doing?' he said.

‘It's dreadfully hard, Daddy,' she answered. ‘I was just trying to make everything solid and rounded. I can't seem to make things look real. Maybe if you showed me …'

He turned away.

‘There's no point, Leonora,' he shrugged his shoulders. ‘You don't have the talent and that's all there is to it. The world is full, bloody overflowing actually, with amateurs. No point adding to them with your nonsense. You'd be better off learning how to cook and mend socks. Perhaps I ought to write to that young man of yours and tell him to come and take you off my hands. If he's still keen, that is.'

‘What young man?' Leonora asked. Surely he couldn't mean Peter? He never knew, did he, how she felt about him?

‘Peter Simmonds. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, Leonora. I wrote to him. I told him he was to have nothing to do with you till you were of age.'

Leonora felt heat filling her, in spite of the cold. She had to understand this, these words her father was saying.

‘When did you write to him, Daddy?'

‘More than three years ago, it must be.'

‘Why did you feel you had to do that?'

‘Why? Oh, don't pretend innocence, Leonora. I intercepted one of his letters. Nanny Mouse left it lying about. It wasn't the sort of letter a chap should have been writing to a young girl who wasn't of age and so I forbade any further communication. Any good father would have done the same thing.'

‘You didn't say a word to me!' Leonora shouted. ‘How could you do such a dreadful cruel thing! Oh, you're a monster. A tyrant. How dare you? If you read one of his letters, you must have known how much we loved one another.'

‘You were too young to know about love,' Ethan said, dismissing her with another shrug of his shoulders.

‘I hate you!' Leonora screamed at him. ‘I'll never forgive you. Never. Peter may be dead. He may have died. How could you have done such a thing to your own daughter?'

‘You're being silly, Leonora. I was looking after your interests. Just as I'm looking after your interests when I discourage you from a life devoted to art.'

‘It's nothing to do with you. You can't tell me what I can and can't do.'

She turned and looked at the page on which she'd been drawing. Maybe he was right about that. She was a fool, setting herself up as some kind of artist when her father was Ethan Walsh, whose paintings were so beautiful that everyone who saw them stood in front of them amazed, and wondering how they'd never noticed the world looked quite like that. She picked the picture up and tore it across once, and then again.

‘There,' she said. ‘I hope you're satisfied. Now that you've ruined my life in every possible way, like a Victorian tyrant. It's all in pieces.'

The tearing sound of the paper went through her, her
eyes misted over with tears and she went on and on tearing and tearing till her picture was reduced to a kind of confetti. She wanted to grind the white flakes she'd made under her feet, stamp on them, obliterate them, but gestures like that didn't go down well with Daddy. He's the only person in Willow Court, Leonora thought, who's allowed to behave like a spoiled child. She went over to the waste basket and let the paper drop into it like so many flower petals.

‘I'm going out. I have to be by myself to think.'

‘In this weather? You'll freeze to death. There's nothing to do out there.'

‘There is. The lake is frozen. I'm taking Mummy's skates out of the trunk and going skating.'