Bombs on Aunt Dainty (20 page)

“But it’s so professional!” cried Mama, and Papa said, “It’s delightful!”

She got a great kick out of the astonished way they looked at her, and out of paying the bill at the end.

But it was the art school outing that really mattered. Anna had hardly been to evening classes while she was working on her murals – there had not been time – but now she was excited at the prospect of seeing John Cotmore again. He’ll have missed me, she thought. It seemed to her suddenly that the purpose of decorating the café had been solely to show it to him, and that when he had seen it and spent a whole evening with her something must change, that something extraordinary and quite unprecedented must happen between them. He’ll realise that I’m grown-up, she thought, more of an equal, and then he’ll…She was not sure herself what he would do. But there would be some sign, some way of committing himself, of showing her that from now on things between them would be quite different.

She was in a state of feverish expectancy by the time he arrived. Hiding behind the menu in a corner, she watched him stand for a moment inside the door and saw the sudden concentration in his face as he looked at her murals. He examined each wall in turn, walking slowly round and twice retracing his steps. At last he saw her and sat down beside her.

“Well,” he said, “you
have
grown up!”

If she’d chosen the words for him she couldn’t have done it better.

“I hoped you’d like it,” she said, and then listened in happy confusion while he praised the composition, her drawing and the subtlety of the colours.

“I expected something good,” he said, “but this is a surprise.”

She could do nothing but sit and smile and watch him as he looked at her work again, and then from her work back to her.

“So this is what you were doing,” he said, “instead of coming to art school!”

It was all happening just as she had hoped. She nodded and smiled and saw his eyes look back at her with a new seriousness…And then the others were upon them.

“It’s enchanting!” cried Harry from the door. “Don’t you think it’s enchanting, John?”

He was followed by Welsh William who settled himself beside her. “I was afraid it would be ladies in crinolines,” he said. “You know, standing about with no feet, the way they used to do on the chocolate boxes. How can I eat my food, I asked myself, when it’s been paid for by ladies in crinolines with no feet? But now –” he gestured respectfully towards the wall – “my conscience is clear.”

“By Winterhalter out of Berthe Morrisot,” said Barbara firmly, and Anna blushed with pleasure.

It seemed like the pleasantest evening she had ever spent. Even the food – dried egg omelette, Spam fritters, vegetable pie – seemed to her delicious. She basked in her friends’ praises and listened to their news – Barbara had a new job
and Welsh William had sold a drawing but was soon to be called up. She ordered food and ate it and glanced surreptitiously at her murals and watched John Cotmore’s face, and all the time her excitement grew because she knew that something more was going to happen, that the best part of the evening was still to come.

At last all the food had been eaten and all the coffee had been drunk. Albert had presented her with the bill and she had paid it with a flourish, and they all stood outside the café in the early evening light.

“Well –” said John Cotmore.

Anna waited.

“Thank you for a lovely evening,” he said. “And thank you for painting such good murals.” He took her hand and suddenly turned to Harry. “I think one’s allowed to kiss a favourite student, isn’t one?” And before she had time to think he had kissed her formally on the cheek. “Congratulations,” he said. “May you paint many more murals as successful as these.”

Then he turned, called out something that could have been either “good night” or “goodbye”, and walked away in the direction of Westminster, with Harry and Barbara following.

Anna could not believe that it had happened. She stood there with the smile still on her face, her hand still ready to take his arm, and the dust of Victoria blowing about her feet.

“Went off a bit sharpish, didn’t he?” said Welsh William,
and they both watched his figure rapidly diminish as it hared off down the street.

“Well,” said Welsh William at last, “coming?”

She roused herself and, still in a daze, walked with him to the tube. He talked all the way, but she did not hear a word. She could think only of John Cotmore. What on earth had happened? Why had he kissed her like that and rushed away? And was it “good night” that he had called out or “goodbye”?

During the next few weeks Anna’s mood varied between happiness and profound depression, and the war seemed to echo her state of mind.

In June the Second Front finally became a reality. This was the landing of British and American troops in the North of France, the first step in liberating the countries overrun by the Nazis four years before. To Anna, remembering the fearful summer of 1940, this was far more exciting than any victories in Africa or Russia, and once it became clear that the Allies were firmly established she began to think, with cautious amazement, that the end of the war might really be in sight.

However, hardly had everyone’s spirits risen before they were dashed again by the arrival of the flying bombs. They were Hitler’s new secret weapon – pilotlesss planes sent across the Channel with a large charge of explosive. When they ran out of fuel they fell to the ground and blew up everything in the vicinity. Most of them were primed to fall on London.

The first time Anna saw one neither she nor Mr
Cuddeford could think what it was. They heard a puttering sound and saw a dark, rounded object with flames spurting from its tail move slowly across the sky. Suddenly it disappeared, the puttering had stopped, and a moment later there was a very loud explosion.

“It must have been a plane,” said Anna, but Mr Cuddeford shook his head.

“None that I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Next day, after an air-raid warning that lasted till dawn, the explanation was in all the papers.

At first only a few flying bombs came over and people laughed at them, telling each other how silly they looked bumbling along, and inventing funny names for them like buzz-bombs or doodle-bugs. But soon they began to arrive in large numbers both by day and by night. It was unnerving, as you went about your business, to listen to the sound of the engines which might cut out at any moment. You prayed for the buzz-bombs to keep going, but felt guilty while you did so because you knew they would only fall on someone else. And the fact that the war might soon be over made everyone wish, quite desperately, to stay alive.

People again began to leave London. The familiar crocodiles of children with labels reappeared at the railway stations, and every day there was new bomb damage among the old. Since the bombs came over all the time it was useless to go to a shelter, and those who remained in London simply dived into the nearest doorway or under the nearest piece of furniture when they heard a flying bomb
cut out, as it seemed, immediately above their heads. Anna was constantly amazed by the agility of the old ladies. One moment they would be sitting at their machines, working away, and the next they would all be under the table, with only Miss Potter’s primly overalled bottom sticking out at one side and Miss Clinton-Brown’s size-eight feet at the other. Mrs Riley, perhaps as a result of her early acrobatic training, always got the whole of herself tucked under.

Anna herself was not as frightened as she had been during the blitz and sometimes almost welcomed the drama of the flying bombs as a distraction from her other worries. John Cotmore had become inexplicably remote since the dinner at her restaurant and she felt as though the rug had been pulled from under her life. Then she thought about Max flying on operations, she did not know how many times a week, and it seemed to her, illogically, that by being in danger herself she must be diverting some of the danger which threatened him.

Mama was even more superstitious. She became meticulous in all her dealings, as though to satisfy some higher agency that might be watching her, and once Anna caught her, after years of only paying her bus fares when they were demanded of her, actually pressing the money into the conductress’s hand. When she caught Anna’s eye she said, “I don’t think one should take any chances,” and added defiantly, “with Max flying and everything!”

At the same time, strangely enough, Mama could not bear to admit that Max was in any danger and became
furious with Papa for saying that he was.

“But they shoot at him!” said Papa, and Mama cried, “Not at him specially! And anyway, they’d never hit Max!”

The evening classes continued in spite of the flying bombs and Anna still lived from each one to the next, but they usually left her depressed and bewildered. Nothing was the same. She only spoke to John Cotmore when he formally discussed her work. Because of the bombs everyone hurried home immediately afterwards and there was only one occasion when they went to a café. This was when Welsh William was called up. He had come to show off his soldier’s uniform and they plied him with talk and coffee as in the old days, but he looked forlorn and much too young to go to war and, on the whole, everyone was relieved when the evening was over.

What had happened to everything? wondered Anna. Only a short time ago it had seemed so promising – the war nearly at an end, her work, and…and everything, she thought, unwilling to give even the vaguest shape to whatever she had expected from John Cotmore. And now it was like being back in the blitz and life seemed empty. When, at the end of July, the art school closed for the summer holidays, it seemed the end of an era.

She got a week’s leave from Mrs Hammond and spent it in the country with the Rosenbergs. The Professor had abandoned his memoirs after the sixth chapter (so all that emotion had been for nothing, thought Anna) and was now
deeply engrossed in growing vegetables for food. Aunt Louise carried on her usual running battle with the maids, and Anna spent much of her time painting a portrait of Fraulein Pimke in a corner of her kitchen. When she wasn’t painting she helped with the vegetables and felt herself grow brown and healthy in the process.

Only at night was there nothing to do, and then she thought about John Cotmore. She relived her visit to his house, and the different times when he had put his arm round her, or kissed her, or said something affectionate. She even counted the number of times he had kissed her. There were eleven, not including the formal peck after dinner at her restaurant. You surely wouldn’t kiss a person eleven times, she argued hopefully, unless you meant it? But what about his strange behaviour during the past weeks? That must be his conscience, she decided – because of his wife.

As she was dropping off to sleep she imagined the most unlikely situations in which he would be driven to declare his love for her. Sometimes it was when she had done a brilliant drawing in the life class. Sometimes he found her trapped under the rubble of a flying bomb explosion, in pain but terribly brave and of course quite unmarked. Other times it was she who saved him by her courage and cheerfulness when they were buried together under the wreckage of the art school. Part of her despised herself for these imaginings, but another part found them a great comfort.

On her return to London she found a message from
Barbara suggesting a meeting, and snatched at the chance at least to talk about him. They ate a modest meal at Lyons Corner House while Anna held forth about his talents and his virtues, and Barbara nodded and agreed, with her pleasant, placid smile. This made Anna feel much better, and they met twice more, once to go to a film and once to a concert. But then Barbara became too busy for further meetings, and Anna was left more lonely than ever.

One day when she was sitting bored at her typewriter Harry rang up. He had been given a batch of tickets for a concert – Beethoven and Mozart, very traditional, he said – and wondered if she’d like to go.

“Bring a friend,” he said. “I’ve asked everyone I can think of and I’ve still got plenty of tickets left.”

Everyone Harry could think of must include John Cotmore, thought Anna, and her lethargy fell away like an old skin.

“I’d love to come!” she cried, surprising him with her enthusiasm, and at once made plans for what she would wear, how she would look, and what she would say.

“I’ll be out tomorrow night,” she announced to Mama and Papa at supper. “I’m going to a concert.”

“Who with?” asked Mama.

Anna frowned at Mama’s curiosity. “No one special,” she said. “Just some people from the art school. There’s a whole lot of tickets, but it’s mostly Beethoven and some of them think that’s rather old-fashioned, so not very many may turn up.”

Frau Gruber came to clear away the plates.

“No appetite today?” she asked Papa who had left most of his vegetable pie, and he smiled and shook his head.

“Beethoven,” he said, and Anna noticed that he looked pale. “What are they playing?”

She told him – the Seventh Symphony and something else that she could not remember, and he nodded.

Mama began to say something about the food, but Papa interrupted her.

“I should like,” he said, “to come with you.”

“To the concert?” cried Anna.

It was impossible.

“They’re not proper seats,” she said quickly. “Not like the ones you used to have in Berlin. These are right up in the gallery, just steps really, that you sit on – only students use them.”

Papa nodded. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I should like very much to come.”

She stared at him, horrified.

“Do you really want to go?” asked Mama. “It does sound a bit spartan.”

Anna waited hopefully, but Papa shook his head.

“The seats are unimportant,” he said. “I should like to hear the music.”

There was no answer to this.

After searching for one in vain, Anna mumbled some sort of agreement and spent the rest of the meal in deepest gloom. The first time in weeks that she might see John
Cotmore, and she was going to be stuck with Papa! During her empty day at the office she had half-fantasised, half-formulated a plan to get him alone, perhaps even to ask him what was wrong, and then perhaps he would explain and he might say…But now Papa had made all that impossible.

She tried to believe, against all previous experience, that he might change his mind, but when she arrived at the theatre the following evening, Papa was already there. He was looking at a poster in the foyer and in his shabby, foreign-looking coat he had a sad air which filled her with a mixture of love and irritation.

“Hullo,” she said, but before she could say any more her heart leapt at the sight of John Cotmore hurrying past to the gallery entrance. So he had come!

She bustled Papa along to Harry who had the tickets, and could hardly contain her impatience while Harry declared his delight at meeting Papa and Papa replied in his halting English. By the time they reached the gallery entrance John Cotmore had long disappeared. Papa embarked cheerfully on the long climb to the top, but it was a slow business and several students, from the art school, passed them on the way. They’ll all sit round John, thought Anna, for gallery seats were not numbered and you sat where you liked.

Sure enough, when she and Papa emerged from the stairs into the sloping space below the roof of the theatre, she discovered John Cotmore surrounded. A whiskered man whom she recognised as another art teacher was on one side
of him, Barbara was on the other, and there were students all around. She stood looking at them glumly while Papa sniffed the air beside her.

“Marvellous!” he said. “The smell! It’s years since I’ve been in a theatre, but it never changes.”

He suddenly darted forward.

“Shall we sit here?” he said, indicating an empty space near the gangway. “Or perhaps,” he added, “you would rather sit with your friends?”

Anna looked gloomily at the crowd round John Cotmore.

“This will do perfectly well,” she said.

She heard only little of the concert.

It began with some over-symmetrical early Mozart which left her mind free for other thoughts. Perhaps I’ll talk to him in the interval, she thought. But when the lights brightened John Cotmore did not move from his seat and the crowd of students remained. Only Barbara came over to greet her and to be introduced to Papa. They had quite a long conversation and Anna felt better when Barbara said in her usual warm way, “Anna, I love your father – I do hope you’ll let me meet him again.”

Perhaps she would tell John Cotmore, and then he, too, would want to meet Papa – perhaps when the concert was over …

“Charming,” said Papa, watching Barbara go, “Absolutely charming.”

Seeing his clever, responsive face, Anna felt suddenly
ashamed at having thought of him only in terms of usefulness. She moved closer to him on the hard seat.

All the same, she thought, why shouldn’t she introduce him to John Cotmore? It would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and Papa would probably be pleased. She could seek him out after the concer …

The orchestra had finally reached Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, and for a while she was swept along by the grandeur of the noise it made. Marvellous! she thought as it thundered through the funeral march in the slow movement. But the next movement was less compelling and gradually it lost her.

She would have to intercept John Cotmore before he left the gallery, she thought, otherwise he might have gone before she and Papa reached the bottom of the stairs. She would say, “John, I’d like you to meet my father.” But she would have to be quick, so as to catch him before he passed them in the gangway. Instinctively, she moved in her seat, and as she did so she caught sight of Papa.

He was sitting quite still, his face a little raised and his hands folded over his coat. His eyes were half-closed, and then Anna saw that they were full of tears and that there were more tears running silently down his cheeks.

“Papa!” she said, all other thoughts stripped away.

He tried to speak but couldn’t, shook his head to reassure her and finally whispered something about “the music”.

Anxiously, she put her hand over his and sat close to him
while the music roared about them, until at last it came to an end. All round them people clapped and stood up and put on their coats.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

He nodded. “In a moment.”

They stayed in their seats while the gallery began to empty.

“I’m sorry if I alarmed you,” he said at last. “It’s just—” He spread his hands. “I hadn’t heard it for years.”

He got to his feet and they moved out slowly in the wake of the others. Once in the fresh air he seemed to feel more himself. It was almost dark. As they picked their way through the crowd he looked back towards the shadowy theatre and murmured “Wonderful!” Out of the corner of her eye Anna could see John Cotmore with Harry and Barbara in a group, and for a moment she wondered – but it was no good. She took Papa’s arm and they set off towards the tube. They were buying the tickets when he stopped in his tracks.