A Gathering Storm (31 page)

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What’ll you have to drink?’ He pulled out a stool for her.

Whilst the landlord fetched her lager, Anthony passed her a menu. They both decided on the same thing – fish and chips. Lucy, despite his insistence on paying, pushed a ten-pound note into his breast pocket. They took their drinks and sat down at right angles to one another at a small table in the window where they could both view the sea. She’d brought her camera with her, and placed it on the floor under the table.

‘I thought I might take some pictures later,’ she explained, ‘when it starts to get dark.’ The sun was low and the rain Beatrice had anticipated had never materialized. Rags of black cloud were dotted about the sky, but they didn’t look as if they’d amount to anything. She might get some dramatic images.

‘Tell me more about your work,’ he said. ‘What kind of thing do you usually like to photograph?’

In response she reached for her camera and showed him some of the pictures she’d taken over the previous few days.

‘They’re good,’ he said.

‘I take cityscapes, too,’ she said, and told him about her exhibition about Little Venice. ‘And anything to do with water. I like the life of it. What it does with light.’

‘I wish I had your skill,’ Anthony said. ‘Some of the places I’ve seen in Afghanistan, I’d love to photograph them. And the people; their faces stay in the mind. How they put up with everything, Christ knows.’ He passed her camera back to her. ‘Do you have a website? I don’t have internet access here, but when I get back I’d love to see what else you’ve done.’

‘It’s on the card I gave you.’

He found it in his wallet. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep it safe,’ he said, smiling at her.

‘How long will you be here?’ Lucy asked. ‘Did you say you had to be back somewhere on Monday?’

‘That’s right. What about you?’

‘Monday, too.’

‘Will you have found out all you need to? From your old lady?’

‘I don’t know. Possibly. I’m not sure at the moment where her story is going, what it all means.’

‘It’s to do with your family, right?’

‘Yes. To do with my father, I think.’

Just then, a young waitress with tattoos up her arms and a diamanté stud under her lower lip arrived with two huge oval plates, each heaped with chips on top of which reclined an enormous strip of battered fish.

‘Wow,’ Lucy breathed, and moved her camera back onto the floor. She and Anthony fell upon the food like starved wolves and for a minute or two they were silent.

After a while she paused and said, ‘When you go back to work on Monday, will you go abroad again? To Afghanistan, I mean?’

He nodded. ‘Looks like it. I’ve had three months here. They think it’s enough.’

‘But you don’t?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you want to go back at all?’ She watched him chew his mouthful and swallow before he answered.

‘I’m dreading it,’ he said.

She put down her knife and fork. ‘Did something particular happen out there? I mean . . .’ It was difficult to imagine what it was like.

She felt put in her place when he said, ‘Lots of things,’ rather abruptly. ‘And one in particular.’

She picked up a chip and dipped it in tomato sauce whilst she considered what to say. ‘You haven’t been here in Saint Florian all the three months, have you?’ It seemed suddenly terrible to her that she’d only just met him, right in the final week of his leave.

‘No,’ he said very quietly. He took a draught of his beer. ‘Just a couple of weeks.’

A silence fell and they ate for a while, then they both spoke at once.

‘I wanted—’ he said, just as she asked, ‘Why—’ then added, ‘Go on.’

‘I needed,’ he said, ‘to be by myself, to try and sort myself out. I seriously love this place. It’s got its memories, but they’re good ones.’ He stared out through the salt-sprayed window, across the twilit sea. Far out on the horizon, a fork of lightning played. ‘I came here once or twice with Gray.’

‘He’s your friend? The one whose family owns the house you’re staying in?’

He nodded slowly. She watched, anxiously, seeing that his eyes were full of pain.

He cleared his throat. ‘He . . . Gray was killed.’

Lucy’s breath was snagged by the little catch in his voice. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she whispered, but her words seemed too inadequate a response to the look of distress on his face. She waited, one hand turned palm up in a hesitant gesture of openness, feeling utterly out of her depth, and yet sensing that he needed her there.

‘Everything all right for you guys?’ The waitress appeared between them suddenly, snatched up Lucy’s empty glass. ‘This one dead? Shall I get you another?’

‘Thanks, yes, same again for both of us,’ Lucy said quickly. ‘Anthony, go on, I’m listening.’

The place was filling up now and she found she had to lean forward to hear what Anthony was saying. ‘I met Gray the first day at officer school, ten years ago.’ He smiled at a memory. ‘It was in the queue for lunch after the first briefing. He came out with this blindingly awful joke. Gray often made me laugh. He was one of those guys who see the lighter side of everything. But there was more to him than that. He was the sort you’d want on your side when you’re in desperate danger, d’you know what I mean?’

Lucy, who had never had that experience, said carefully, ‘I can try and imagine.’

‘We stayed best mates throughout, even though I got up the promotion ladder ahead of him. Not everyone knew what to make of his sense of humour.’

There was another pause as the drinks arrived. They’d finished their meal so the waitress cleared their plates.

When she’d finally left them in peace, Anthony leant in nearer, his arms folded on the table. She did not move away. ‘Maybe you don’t realize,’ he said, studying her, ‘how close soldiers have to live with one another. Sharing tiny spaces – tanks, trenches. We have to look out for one another whilst respecting privacy. I have had to learn to read all the different aspects of my men’s characters. They know me, too: what spooks me, what pisses me off . We don’t necessarily all like each other, but we have to get on, to rely on each other. Like a family, except more so; we need to trust each other in order to survive. You can’t have a row and stomp out. Are you with me?’

She nodded, though she could think of no situation she’d ever been in where she’d had to rely on someone like that.

‘So as an officer, you feel incredibly responsible.’ He shook his head and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he said, ‘Lucy, what happened, I can’t talk about it easily, OK? In fact, I didn’t mean to start on it at all. Sorry, I bring you out on a date and I weep all over the carpet and ruin your evening.’

‘Is this a date?’ she said. ‘Not that I mind exactly, but I’d like to know.’

He laughed, moved closer again and crinkled his eyes at her. ‘It could be if you want. Or we could just be having a meal together.’

They looked into one another’s eyes and she had the strange and panicky sensation that she was falling. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.

She watched him take out a packet of tobacco and roll a cigarette, though he didn’t light it. Beatrice had described how suddenly and completely one could fall in love, but she still didn’t quite believe it. What did she think she was doing with this man? A day or two more would pass and then they’d never see each other again. Was she setting herself up to get hurt or to hurt him? Tonight she’d seen more of the grief and damage he was grappling with; it made her wonder whether she lived too superficially, photographing the way that light glanced off the water, never looking deeper to see what swirled in the currents beneath.

She emerged from the reverie to hear him say, ‘Would you like anything else to eat? No? Coffee?’

‘No, I’m fine, thanks. A walk by the sea might be nice.’

‘Good idea. Let’s go.’

There was still light in the sky when they got outside. To the right a footpath like a pale snake led away across the headland. They followed it a short way out to a viewpoint where they could watch the town fall into darkness, soft lights coming on, reflecting on the water, the scent of Anthony’s cigarette smoke not quite masking the salty smell of the sea. There they stood for a while, separate, motionless, lost in their own thoughts, the waves booming and crashing below.

He laughed suddenly and she said, ‘What?’ Smiling.

‘I was just remembering our first sailing trip together,’ he said, and soon they were both laughing. Then he took her hand and drew her to him.

‘Have you thought about my question yet?’ he asked, his lips at her ear.

She knew immediately what he meant.

‘It kind of might be a date,’ she replied, enjoying teasing him. She closed her eyes as he kissed her and again she felt as though she was falling. But this time she knew that he was holding her safe.

‘Tomorrow’s Thursday,’ he said, when they came up for air. ‘I have to drive back to London on Sunday. And then . . .’

‘Don’t talk about it,’ she said. ‘Let’s enjoy the time we have.’

‘I’m up for that,’ he said quietly. And he kissed her again.

London, July 1941

Three weeks after Angelina’s wedding, Beatrice found what she’d been looking for. She overheard a fellow FANY driver complaining that her lodger was leaving.

‘I need somewhere,’ Beatrice told her. The other woman, Dinah, who had a way of looking down her nose that made Beatrice feel uncomfortable, studied her with surprise as though she hadn’t really noticed her before, then seemed to come to a conclusion.

‘Good show. It’s not much of a room, I’m afraid, but the last girl didn’t seem to mind. You can come and see the flat for yourself.’

The bedroom was indeed ‘not much’, being a long narrow room right next to the bathroom. This meant that the noises of the whole house’s plumbing system often woke her early, but Beatrice came to find the clanking of pipes and rushing of water comforting, and she liked the view from the window onto other people’s back gardens; a busy mosaic of vegetable beds and airraid shelters criss-crossed with fencing. The flat took up half the first floor of a converted Victorian house in Primrose Hill, and looked out towards Regent’s Park. On a still night, strange bird cries and the roars of big cats could be heard, which gave Beatrice the delicious fancy of being somewhere more exotic than exhausted old London. The drawing room and kitchen were light and airy, even in the summer heat, and a flat roof at the back, accessible by the nimble from the kitchen window, was, Dinah assured her, just the place for sunbathing, though Beatrice didn’t think she would be crawling out there any time soon. Next door, a fox terrier, who made Bea think of dear old Jinx, barked rhythmically at the sky for an hour each evening after the air-raid warning, doing its bit to ward off the bombers. One of the best things about the flat was that Dinah was only there half the time. Another FANY driver was quick to inform Beatrice that Dinah was having an affair with a senior officer, who lived in Knightsbridge while his wife, in blissful ignorance probably, kept the home fires burning in Suffolk. Beatrice found the burden of this knowledge uncomfortable and never discussed it with Dinah. At the same time, she was aware that her own predicament meant she was hardly in a position to judge others. She liked Dinah all right. Five or six years older than Bea, tall and blonde, she was straightforward and, despite her cool manner, at heart unsnobbish and often kind. Although the two women had little in common, it worked for them to share digs together because each was fairly considerate of the other whilst not taking an unhealthy interest in what was plainly private business. That said, Beatrice took the precaution of telling Dinah about the baby immediately. After all, she would notice very quickly anyway. All Dinah said in her understated way, was, ‘Poor you. Well, at least you get better rations.’

One morning, when she’d been in her new home for five or six weeks, Beatrice was shocked to catch sight of herself in the long hall mirror as she was getting ready to go out. Five months pregnant and it was as though her belly had grown overnight. She’d already had to let out the waistband of her skirt, but now the hem rode up in front and the buttons of her jacket looked fit to burst. In short, her condition was starting to become obvious. Arrangements of some sort would have to be made.

Still she hesitated to say anything to her Commanding Officer, fearing her reaction. In the end it was Sandra Williams herself who called Beatrice into the tiny windowless back room that she called her office, and asked if she was all right.

‘Yes,’ she said automatically. ‘Why?’

Williams bit her lip and frowned. She was a plain but hearty woman, whose forehead shouldn’t be so furrowed in her early thirties. The girls were responsive to her down-to-earth manner and caring disposition. Beatrice had long ago gauged that coming to work was a welcome relief from living with an ailing widowed mother in Surrey.

‘Well, you don’t look your usual self.’ Sandra waited and, struck to the heart by her kind look, Beatrice promptly burst into tears.

When she recovered sufficiently to speak, she explained everything. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she finished up. ‘I haven’t heard from my fiancé at all. He’d have written if he’d got my letters, I’m sure he would.’

‘What about your parents, can they help?’

‘I haven’t told them about the baby yet. They still haven’t even met Guy. I daren’t break it to them, they’d be so upset.’

‘I expect they’d help you, though. You ought to try.’

After that, things moved quickly. Williams, being her Commanding Officer and hence in charge of her welfare, promised to get Beatrice put onto lighter duties – office work, most probably. After all, you won’t be able to fit behind a driving wheel soon!’

Beatrice wrote to her mother and was touched by the response she received a few days later.