Blitz (23 page)

‘Then we’ll all be there,’ Robin said and grinned at Hamish.

‘Well, as long as I’m no’ on duty,’ he said and Robin made a face and looked at her mother.

‘Hell! I forgot that sort of problem! What do we do?’

‘The date’s not set yet,’ Poppy said, a little unwillingly, feeling herself railroaded and not knowing first of all why it mattered, and secondly why she didn’t stand up for her own doubts. ‘I suppose it could be fixed to fit in with you – ’

‘Great! I’ll check the off-duty for the next while and let you know when Hamish and I are off duty –’ She stopped then and looked at Sam Landow a little shyly. ‘I can’t speak for the doctors, of course.’

‘No need to worry about me,’ Sam Landow said. ‘I’d love to come to your party and I thank you kindly for the invitation. And as soon as you let me know the date and the time, I’ll make an arrangement with Mike Smith. He makes me change duties over and over to fit in with his elaborate love life, so there’s no reason why he shouldn’t do it for me for just once! It’ll be a pleasure to ask him.’

‘So there it is,’ Jessie said beaming round at them all. ‘It’s settled. Poppy and me, we make a party at Mildred’s house, and everybody comes. It’ll be the best ever, believe me!’

It had been a raw grey day, and the evening had turned it into a bitterly cold night. Robin, huddled in the corner seat on the bus that was trundling through Oxford Street towards Bayswater and Holland Park, pulled her coat more firmly around her and wondered forlornly how she could possibly expect to look anything but a wreck at the party. She knew her nose was red with the cold, and that her lashes, to which she had daringly applied a coat of mascara, were beaded with the tears that the biting air stung out of her eyes, and that altogether she was anything but the image of a happy girl embarked on a glamorous evening out.

Chick beside her was just as miserable, but not quite as cold, for she had dug out of her capacious luggage a pair of large fur ear-muffs, which sat incongruously on each side of her round face and made her look like a startled and dishevelled rabbit, and Robin turned her head to peer at her in the gloom thrown by the small blue light-bulbs that were sparsely arranged inside the bus and wanted to laugh at her; and felt too cold to do so.

Chick caught her eye and reached up to pull off her ear-muffs. ‘Here you are, kid. Your turn to be warm,’ she said and then huddled more deeply into her coat collar.

‘Oh, it’s all right.’ Robin tried to push them back at her, but Chick growled, ‘Put ’em on, you great ninny! Your nose is glowing like a good deed in a naughty world. You can’t arrive looking like that. Your Hamish’d be badly put out.’

‘He’s not my Hamish,’ Robin said. ‘And anyway, you saw his note –’ But it was an almost automatic retort. She’d got used to Chick’s teasing about Hamish. She had for weeks insisted on behaving as though he and Robin were Tristan and
Isolde or Abelard and Heloise come again, even though Robin had assured her over and over again that she regarded the big Scot as little more than a very good friend, but tonight she was too miserable to care anyway.

It had not been a good night last night. She and Chick had come on duty full of excitement because the next night was to be the first of four nights off duty, and starting with a party, today, expecting to find good old Sister Priestland – of whom both had grown very fond – bustling about as usual; only to discover that she had sprained her ankle in a bomb hole while crossing the yard and was off sick. Which meant that Staff Nurse Meek was in charge, her eyes gleaming with pleasure at the prospect of harrying all her juniors unmercifully, and Chick and Robin, for whom most of her ire was saved, most of all.

And harry them she had. How Chick had kept a civil tongue between her teeth had been little short of a miracle and Robin too had been goaded almost beyond bearing, with the most ill-named Nurse Meek sending her to do all the foulest cleaning-up jobs she could find for her, and then, after she’d done them, making Hamish go and do them again since Robin’s efforts, as she told the entire department, patients and all, in a very loud voice, had been so puerile.

Hamish, who had a good line in dumb stoical acceptance had shown no reaction at all when this happened, except for throwing a sharp and minatory glance at Robin which almost in as many words warned her not to rise to the bait that Meek was so carefully trailing, and even when the Staff Nurse changed her tactics and started sending Robin to redo some of Hamish’s jobs, kept his mouth firmly closed and his expression calm and unworried. And Robin, with that example, somehow managed to be quiet, too. But doing so had used up a great deal of her energy and she had gone off duty drooping, as Chick put it, like a lily three days after the funeral.

‘That Meek woman is the biggest, most grade-A female animal I’ve ever come across!’ Robin had exploded as they’d traipsed up to the night nurses’ supper table. ‘One of these days I’ll put strychnine in her coffee. I swear it – ’

‘Not worth hanging for,’ Chick said. ‘And say what you mean. The woman’s a bitch and cow and a – ’

‘Hush, Chick,’ Robin warned, for they were within Night Sister’s earshot now as she stood magisterially serving the night
staff’s meal, her way of making sure they were all present. ‘They’ll have you up for lèse-majesté or something – ’

‘The hell with it,’ Chick said cheerfully. ‘It was a female animal you said, wasn’t it? All right then! If anyone listens in we were talking zoology. Oh, God, look at that! Dead baby and mashed innards as well. How can our guardians be so lousy to us?’

Robin had taken her portion of suet pudding with bacon bits in it and the pile of hideously mashed beets to her place at the table to stir it around and pretend to eat, and then had gone to bed to sleep uneasily all day, and had got up with the ghost of a headache to mar her anticipation of at least a better evening than she had experienced last night; only to find waiting for her a note from Hamish explaining tersely that he’d had his duty changed and had to be on until ten pm, so he’d be late at the party if he managed to get there at all, which he doubted, though he’d do his best.

She had to admit her disappointment wasn’t so much because she wanted Hamish to be with her, fond though she had become of him; it was more that she needed him as an accessory. The thought of walking into her grandmother’s party with just Chick beside her and seeing Chloe’s jeering state made her face go hot – which in this ice-cold bus was at least a little comforting – because she always did manage to make Robin feel inadequate in such matters. To be accompanied by a young man of her own, for once, would have been so nice.

But there it was, she couldn’t be, and somehow she’d have to carry it off. And she sighed there beside Chick, a little gustily, and was rewarded with a sharp glance and then a little squeeze of her arm.

‘Fed up, ducky? Me too. Last night really was the pits.’

‘Well, maybe dear old Priestland’ll be back by the time we are,’ Robin said, trying to sound optimistic. ‘And maybe tonight’ll be fun – though I’m beginning to doubt it.’

‘Why? There’ll be lots of your Auntie Jessie’s food and that makes up for a hell of a lot.’

‘Not for my grandmother looking daggers at Auntie Jessie and Auntie Jessie just laughing at her, which always makes the old lady worse, and Ma trying to keep the peace between them. This party seemed like a good idea when they talked about it two months ago. Now I’m not so sure. Those two cousins could
turn out to be complete stuffed shirts, and there’ll be Chloe –’ and again she lapsed into gloomy silence as she contemplated her half-sister’s probable behaviour.

‘Well, we’ll just have to make the best of it. Where do we get out?’ Chick peered out at the dark street outside and Robin did too and then jumped up.

‘Dammit, we’ve gone too far,’ she said. ‘Come on.’ And they tumbled off the bus at the next stop, only to find that in the blackout they’d managed to undershoot by two fare stages and so had to walk, in their thin dancing shoes, all the rest of the way.

But at least the exercise warmed them up and they arrived at the house at Leinster Terrace looking better than either of them knew, their eyes bright with the gloss of tears created by the cold, and their cheeks rosy.

The house was already full of people – not all of whom Robin knew – and she and Chick went upstairs to the drawing room, leaving their coats and ear-muffs and gloves and scarves downstairs with a sulky Queenie, who was obviously feeling highly put upon and letting everyone know it, both of them unusually quiet.

The house looked to Robin much more grand than it usually did; Mildred had somehow managed to find someone to collect masses of holly to tie to the wide sweep of the balustrade and its rich green and red glowed against the well-polished mahogany, leading them up to the first-floor hall where a large and surprisingly well-trimmed Christmas tree stood glittering with tinsel and coloured glass balls and a large shining star on the topmost branch.

Chick stopped suddenly and stared at it and then said abruptly in a tight voice, ‘Oh, Robin, I do wish I was at home!’ And Robin, taking no offence at all but understanding completely, took her arm and led her into the drawing room, determined to put her own ill temper aside and make the best of the evening for poor old Chick’s sake. She didn’t often give way to homesickness, and sometimes it must be misery for her.

Across the roomful of people a tall man in the elegance of Air Force blue saw the two girls coming in and let a slow smile move across his face. One was small and rather thin and had dark curly hair which she wore in a long bob, and the other was much taller, just as dark and curly but altogether more
voluptuously built, find he watched her as the two girls moved across the room towards the corner where the old lady sat in her high-backed chair. And as the smaller of the two girls bent to kiss the old lady’s cheek, he moved strategically across the room, making his way around the edges of the groups of talking people in an offhand sort of drifting way that made it seem as though he was doing nothing more than ambling gently with no purpose.

But he undoubtedly had one and it served him well; as he reached the corner where the old lady sat surveying her party, the smaller of the two girls moved away, her attention drawn by the extraordinary old bat in crimson who had now arrived in the room, leaving the tall one talking to the occupant of the high-backed chair; and the man in Air Force blue moved in closer.

‘ – glad that you could come,’ the old lady was saying. ‘I much dislike the thought of dear Robin travelling alone in London during these difficult times. One never knows what mightn’t happen – and you too of course are better off with a companion. Now go and – ’

‘Hi, Aunt Mildred,’ the man in blue said. ‘I thought I’d just come and talk to you again, you know and – but I hope I’m not interrupting?’

‘Not at all,’ Chick said and looked at him consideringly. Tall. A definite plus, tall, for Chick, who had been complaining ever since her arrival of the shortage of men in London – ‘meaning they’re all like shrimps!’ she would say to anyone who would listen. ‘I can eat soup off most of their heads, and I know too many bald patches a great deal too intimately for my taste, believe me.’ There were all too few men around she could, as she would say, look up to. This one was a good three inches above her, which made him six foot two. And there was more. He had an agreeable face and a charming smile and he was looking at her with warm approval. Chick stopped looking at him consideringly and instead beamed on him cheerfully and said again, ‘Not at all!’ but this time with a whole new emphasis on the words.

‘This is my nephew Daniel Amberley from Johannesburg,’ Mildred said and looked sharply up at him. ‘Daniel, allow me to introduce my granddaughter’s friend, Miss Chester.’

Chick put out one hand very directly. ‘Hi!’ she said.

He laughed then. ‘Another colonial, like me? This has to be my lucky night.’

‘Canadian,’ Chick said. ‘Glad you spotted it. I get sick to death of being called an American.’

‘And I get just as sick as being thought to be Australian,’ he said. ‘Will you excuse us, Aunt Mildred? This girl looks like she needs a drink.’

‘That’s what parties are for, I imagine,’ Mildred said drily and watched them go, a slight crease between her brows. Chick, noticing it, felt a moment of chill and then forgot it. Old ladies – they had a tendency to look disapproving if you just breathed in. No need to fret over her. And she let herself be taken over to a long table at the far side where a punch bowl and glasses stood looking remarkably festive.

Robin was standing by the table, a punch cup in her hand, talking to the tall and slightly stooping figure of Sam Landow, and she turned as Chick came up to her and smiled.

‘Feeling better?’ she asked and Chick beamed at her.

‘Amazingly better. It was just a moment’s lapse, believe me. Here, let me be really cute – I’ve never had to introduce relations to each other before. Robin, were you ever wrong. This is no stuffed shirt. This is your cousin Daniel Amberley from South Africa, and Daniel, this is your cousin Robin Bradman. There! That’s really an all time first for me!’

‘Oh!’ Robin said and stared at the tall man unashamedly and then, reddening slightly, remembered her manners. ‘May I introduce Dr Sam Landow? Dr Landow, my cousin Daniel.’

‘In the RAF?’ Landow said as he shook hands. ‘A South African?’

‘Oh,’ Daniel said easily and reached for a glass of punch being offered by the maid behind the table to give it to Chick and then take one for himself, ‘they’re very open-minded, you know. They’ll even take some of us raw colonials. These are hard times, after all.’

He laughed and looked down at Chick who laughed too and then moved a fraction closer to him. Robin was startled. It was as though they had suddenly become opponents against herself and Sam Landow, a pair of invaders united against the residents, and she had never felt that with Chick before. And she had opened her mouth to make some sort of joke about England being grateful for all the help she could get these days
when Chick moved away from him and whirled around as on the other side of the room someone started to play a gramophone.