Alice's Girls (3 page)

The girls had smirked and nudged when it became obvious to them that Georgina was attracting the attention of Christopher Bayliss, whom they encountered when he was on leave from the RAF.

The young pilot, his nerves fraying, the breakdown he was about to experience only weeks away, approached Georgina clumsily, teased her about her pacifism and insulted her by implying that she, like most of the girls he fancied, was his for the taking. When she finally agreed to
have dinner with him it was, although it was a long time before he realised it, because she sensed his underlying vulnerability and saw, beneath the gung-ho bravado, the fragile state he was in. Nevertheless it had been she, when he finally cracked, who supported him through the early months of his breakdown. This, added to several other incidents which had shocked the Post Stone community – the death of one of the girls in an air raid on Plymouth, the suicide of a Jewish refugee and now the devastation of a young man, however obnoxious Georgina may have thought him, who had, for years, been risking his life in defence of his country – began to shake and then to undermine her pacifist convictions.

Ironically, Christopher, by then slowly recovering in a military nursing home, astonished Georgina by announcing suddenly that he himself was now opposed to war. He was, unsurprisingly, dismayed when she told him of her own change of heart and that she was about to quit the Land Army and use the flying skills she had learnt as a schoolgirl to serve in the Air Transport Auxiliary, a
non-combative
arm of the RAF.

They had been walking in the overgrown grounds of the building to which the psychiatric hospital had been evacuated. Christopher had stopped in his tracks when she told him.

‘But you can’t!’ he said, staring at her in astonishment. ‘It’s against everything you believe in! Everything you’ve taught
me
to believe in!’

‘I think I was wrong, Chris! And I think, until recently, I rather went along with what my family feels about the war instead of working it out for myself. But so many awful things have happened! Poor Chrissie getting killed! Andreis shooting himself because of what the Nazis are doing to the Jews! And you! Look what it’s done to you! We have to stop them, Chris! We have to!’ He began walking on, away from her, leaving her standing. After a beat she hurried after him, caught up with him and they moved on, side by side and in silence, along the mossy path.

‘I’d thought you might come with me to live in the woodman’s cottage,’ he said, eventually. It had been decided that, when discharged from the hospital, Christopher would spend some time working in his father’s woodlands. There had been some discussion regarding the wisdom of this. The woodman’s cottage was primitive, isolated and near derelict, but he had been determined and his father’s reservations had been overruled. ‘I’d thought we could work together and be together and …’

‘Just shut our eyes and ears to what is happening in this war? I can’t do that anymore, Chris!’

‘So you don’t want to be with me?’ he said flatly, and she couldn’t meet his eyes because she knew that what she would see there was a side of Christopher that disturbed her. She had not cared for the brash, young man she had first encountered, but when, almost unrecognisable under three weeks’ growth of beard, his hair tangled, his clothes fouled, his wrists cuffed as he was manhandled into a
military police van, her temper had flared and she had shouted at his captors and tried to pull them away from him, when no one else had made any attempt to defend him.

Their relationship, in those early weeks of his breakdown, had subtly shifted. While she had become strong and supportive, he had grown needy and reliant. She had, in fact, pitied him and he, much later, had recognised this and reluctantly accepted the fact that it made him unattractive to her. They had parted, remaining curiously aware of one another, encountering each other only occasionally and unsatisfactorily. It was Alice Todd who sensed that there was something significant between the two of them, and she who remained Georgina’s confidante even after the girl had left the hostel, acting as a sort of go-between, observing Christopher’s recovery and Georgina’s experiences in the ATA. She wisely avoided giving direct advice and had considered her words very carefully when she responded to what they told her of their lives and their feelings.

Over recent months Alice had seen little of either of them but, shortly before Christmas, on the night of Margery Brewster’s party, Alice had urged Roger Bayliss to try to persuade his son to spend Christmas Day at home with him at the higher farm, rather than alone in the isolated cottage. She had insisted that they drove, on the spur of the moment and through wind and rain, up into the forest to fetch him. As they approached the cottage they had found the track blocked by a fallen tree and been surprised to 
discover that Christopher already had a visitor. Someone who had arrived on a motorcycle, which Alice immediately recognised as the one which Georgina often borrowed from her brother. Guessing, correctly, that Christopher and Georgina were alone together in the cottage, Alice had dissuaded Roger from interrupting his son’s evening.

At Lower Post Stone, Rose, having crossed the yard to take several telephone calls from Georgina’s worried father, expected and received an honest account of the night’s events from Alice.

‘They need to work things out between them,’ she told Rose, who was flushed with excitement. ‘We must respect their privacy. I’m sure Georgie will tell us whatever news there is when she’s ready.’ Rose, shocked by this irregular behaviour, yet thrilled to be privy to it, had allowed Alice to swear her to secrecy.

It was several weeks before Georgina, whose Christmas leave from her base at White Waltham had been brief, visited Lower Post Stone, arriving one cold, sunny January morning, riding her brother’s motorcycle and wearing borrowed leathers which she stepped out of, emerging lithe and elegant, and draped over one of the kitchen chairs. She sat, warming her cold hands, watching Alice prepare the pie the land girls would eat that evening.

‘Good Christmas?’ Alice asked as innocently as she could, aware that Georgina’s clear, uncompromising eyes were scrutinising her, and that every inflection of her voice
or expression on her face which might confirm the girl’s suspicions was being noted.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ Georgina said, smiling. Alice was relieved by her light-heartedness. Georgina was, in fact, almost mocking her. ‘You and Mr Bayliss.’

‘Me and Mr Bayliss what?’ Alice asked, blushing. Georgina was laughing now, unable to control her amusement at Alice’s unconvincing attempt to conceal the obvious facts.

‘You and Mr Bayliss were in the forest on the night of the storm! You got as far as the fallen tree and you recognised the bike and you fled! Right?’

Alice could not deny it. Absurdly embarrassing as it was, she remained in doubt about precisely what Georgina and Christopher had deduced or how they had interpreted what had happened.

‘We thought we heard the motor of some sort of vehicle above the noise of the gale,’ Georgina told her. ‘By morning the rain had washed away most of the tyre tracks. We guessed it was the farm truck but couldn’t work out why whoever it was had driven up. Then we twigged that it was someone who recognised my brother’s bike.’

Alice dusted flour from her hands and sat, facing Georgina across the large circle of rolled pastry.

‘It was entirely my fault,’ she sighed. ‘We’d been to the Brewsters’ party and you know what Margery is like where alcohol is concerned. She’d laced the punch with God knows what and we all got a bit … well, mellow!
Roger was not as bad as I was, but … Anyway, I got it into my head that he should insist on Christopher coming home for Christmas and, bless his heart, he agreed to drive me up to the cottage to fetch him …’ Georgina was staring, round-eyed. ‘I know, Georgie! It was madness – but actually rather fun at that stage … We had to use the truck, of course, and there was floodwater in the lanes and the forest track was half washed away! We got as far as the fallen tree, decided to walk the last bit and then saw the bike! I knew at once that it was Lionel’s. Your scarf was hanging out of the pannier, so I was certain you were there! Poor Roger … I insisted that we shouldn’t intrude on Christopher’s privacy or some such nonsense and dragged him away! He must have thought I was insane!’ Georgina was looking slightly more serious now.

‘You mean … Mr Bayliss didn’t know I was there?’

‘No! And he still doesn’t!’ Alice hesitated. ‘You see, I don’t know how Roger stands on moral issues. My own views have been, shall we say, broadened by some of the things you girls have got up to since I’ve been warden – but Roger’s … You have to remember, Georgie, that Queen Victoria was still on the throne when he was born and if you and Christopher … what I mean is … how would he react to the fact that his prospective daughter-in-law was … what do they call it …?’

‘Sleeping with his son is what they call it, Alice!’ The warden had suggested to Georgina, some months previously, that she might like to use her Christian name,
but the ‘Mrs Todd’ habit, once established, had proved hard to shake and it was only now, perhaps because their relationship seemed to have subtly altered, that ‘Alice’ came easily to her. ‘Yes,’ she continued blithely, ‘we are sleeping together. We are lovers – and we are incredibly happy! I suppose it’s odd, how we took so long to sort ourselves out, but he was rather horrid when I first met him, you know.’

‘He was ill, Georgie!’

‘Yes, he was ill. But then he got all fragile and clingy and I was such a brute to him!’

‘My dear girl, you were never a brute! You couldn’t have been expected to know what was going on in his poor head! He didn’t even know himself!’

‘But then there was Fitzie!’ Georgina murmured, guiltily. ‘What was all that about?’

‘Squadron Leader Fitzsimmonds was an attractive man who offered you a light-hearted flirtation at a time when that was exactly what you needed.’

‘It went a little further than that, Alice!’

‘But … not …?’

‘No. Not!’ Georgina confirmed. Then she was laughing again.

‘What’s funny?’ Alice demanded, half seriously.

‘You are! One moment you’re all “modern woman” condoning fornication! Oh, yes you were! And the next you’re sighing with relief because I didn’t misbehave with poor Fitzie … who just got married, by the way! To my
flying friend Lucinda! So now they’re off somewhere, looping the loop together. So sweet!’

‘Good heavens, Georgie! The way people talk these days! The things they do!’

‘It’s the war,’ Georgina said, suddenly serious. ‘It’s driven us all out of our minds.’

They sat for a while in silence, Georgina picturing the handsome Canadian flier with whom she had come close to having a serious affair, and how she had understood, quite suddenly, one morning when she was ferrying a Mosquito cross-country, from the RAF storage unit at Little Rissington to the airfield at Filton, that it was Christopher Bayliss who mattered most to her, and not only most, but hugely.

It had been a short flight and the visibility was good. A blustery wind had moderated considerably since she had taken off and she was relaxed and enjoying the unusually stress-free assignment when the image of Neil Fitzsimmonds came into her head. There he was, self-confident and handsome, enviably at ease with the way he was moving through what he described, almost affectionately, as his war. When they had met, nine months previously, and he had been a senior member of her group of fliers and she a new recruit, they had been mutually attracted to one another. He had sought her out, and despite their heavy workloads and constant movement between the various airfields and repair workshops, they had contrived to see a lot of each other. When their feelings had deepened they had planned
what Georgina regarded as a voyage of discovery – a week of leave, which was to be spent alone together, in a borrowed cottage on the North Devon coast. However, on that morning flight, as she glimpsed, through broken cloud, the southern Cotswolds and the meanderings of the River Avon, the image of Neil Fitzsimmonds became replaced in her mind by Christopher Bayliss, and she understood suddenly, and without doubt, his overwhelming importance to her.

‘Fitzie took it very well,’ Georgina explained to Alice, ‘and quite soon afterwards discovered Lucinda. So all was well. Except that Chris had changed. When I first arrived at the cottage I thought it was going to be a disaster.’

‘Well of course he had changed, Georgie! Six months had passed and he had recovered.’

‘I know, and I was stupid not to have expected him to be different. It was a bit embarrassing at first, getting to grips with how our relationship had altered … But he was so adorable, Alice!’ She remembered the scene, only weeks previously, when she and Christopher, having found their way through the confusion and near tragedy of the previous year, had comprehended each other and understood what the result of that comprehension was going to be.

Rose’s footfalls, as she moved about the bedrooms on the floor above them, and the squabbling of the farm jackdaws at the top of the kitchen chimney stack, were the only sounds.

‘We’re very happy, Alice,’ Georgina said solemnly, and
Alice told her she had always believed they would be and asked whether they had got as far as making any plans for the future.

‘Chris has a plan, and of course, I’m included in it now. I can tell
you
but we are not going to make any announcements to our parents until—’

‘Announcements?’ Alice queried. ‘That sounds a bit, well, formal!’

‘It’s just until … until things are more definite. Dates and things. Dates of sailings, Alice. Of ships.’ She was watching Alice’s face.

‘Ships?’ Alice echoed.

‘Yes. To New Zealand.’

Alice was speechless. Then Georgina was explaining that Christopher, always fascinated by trees, had been studying arboriculture intensively over the past year. ‘He’s completed all the practical stuff and got some sort of diploma which he needed in order to qualify for a job he’s applied for with the New Zealand Forestry Commission.’ She paused, watching Alice’s astonishment. ‘He’s working on his final thesis now and it’s almost finished … We don’t want to tell anyone until everything’s settled …’