In the dour and icy darkness of a winter’s dawn on the 11th of November 1918 in the unlikely setting of a railway carriage standing deep in a forest in France a group of tired and sober-faced men put their names to an historic document. A few hours later, at eleven that same morning, the church bells rang, the maroons boomed and men crawled from the trenches for the last time, hardly daring to believe that it was safe to do so. It was Armistice Day, and the war to end all wars was itself finally ended.
At home a tempest of celebration swept the land. People streamed into the streets, laughing, weeping, cheering, singing, the incandescent and insubstantial bubble of victory dancing before them, and understandably on that morning few thought to question it. The years of slaughter had come to an end: that for the moment was enough. And if all the tears shed on that day were not tears of joy, and if not everyone felt inclined to join the roistering crowds who rode in flag-decked cars and taxis, danced on bunting-wreathed omnibuses, sang and celebrated their way down streets that were safe at last, it made no great difference to those bent upon carnival.
Molly’s first thought, after the initial euphoria at The Larches, was for Annie and Sarah. She hurried through streets where strangers greeted her to the small house the two women shared. As she had suspected, the general happiness was not well reflected in the dark little kitchen in which Annie, with relentless, energetic rhythm, kneaded dough for a batch of bread, her face a sombre contrast to those smiling ones Molly had seen in the streets outside. Little Tom, his nose on a level with the table top, stood on tiptoe to watch the fascinating operation, his dark eyes solemn. Beside the open grate Sarah sat, rocking slightly, her veined and knotted hands folded unquietly in her lap.
“Oh, please, won’t you come back to The Larches with me? The girls would love to see you, and we could—”
The dough crashed hard onto the table. Tom jumped, startled. Annie shook her head. The bright hair had faded, the mouth that once had smiled so readily was tight. She had put on a considerable amount of weight, and her clothes, though clean, were untidy and dowdy. There was little sign in her of that laughing girl who had ridden with Charley to Epping Forest. “No, Moll. Thanks all the same. We’re all right here. Young Tom, you get your fingers out of there!”
Molly looked from one to the other, her heart aching, “Sarah? Won’t you come? At least for tea?”
Sarah lifted her head. In the last two years, Molly thought with a pang, she had aged ten. She looked frail and old. “Nay, lass. Like our Annie says, we’ll do all right here, thanks all the same. You go on along home. The girls’ll be wanting to get out and about and ’tis only natural that they should.” She smiled tiredly. “Thanks for thinking of us, lass.”
The atmosphere in the room was oppressive. Heavy net curtains obscured the one window, the small fire glowed sullenly in the half-darkness.
“Annie,” Molly said softly, “I’m not suggesting that we should have a party or dance in the streets. Do you think that I don’t understand? Do you think that I don’t mourn? You know me better than that. I came because I couldn’t bear to think of you here, alone. I want you both to come back with me so that we can be together. As Charley, and Jack, and Nancy would have wanted us to be. The war – is over.” She spoke the words slowly, emphasizing them. “We have to look to the future now.”
“Yes, well,” Annie said, quietly, “we aren’t all as good at that as you are.”
The words were not spoken unkindly, yet the bite was there, and Molly flinched from it.
“Oh, hell!” With considerable violence Annie dumped the dough on the table and gestured with her whitened hands. “I’m sorry, Moll, love. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, honest I didn’t. Christ knows where we’d have been without you over these past couple of years. But you have to understand – we aren’t all like you. Do you think I don’t see what’s happening to me? Do you think I wouldn’t do something about it if I could?”
Alarmed by his mother’s tone Tom began to whimper. Annie was across the room and had him in her arms in a second. “Oh, there now, Tommy love, what is it?”
Sarah’s eyes met Molly’s. “There’s nowt to do here, lass,” she said kindly. “Go home to your girls. They’ll be waiting. It’s where you belong.”
Fighting misery, Molly hurried through the festive streets to discover to her surprise Adam’s car standing outside the door of The Larches.
She ran swiftly up the steps to the front door, which opened as if by magic as she approached it.
“Oh, Mum, where have you been? You’ve been ages!” Meghan danced around her, soft skirt swinging around long legs, the golden rose her brother had given her sparkling at her throat. “Adam’s here. He’s come to take us out. To London, to see the celebrations. In the car! Oh, do come on, we’ve been waiting and waiting. I thought you were never coming back!”
“I had to see your Grandma and Aunt Annie.” Molly looked over her daughter’s shoulder to where, in the deeper shadow beyond the door, Adam stood waiting, watching her, smiling.
“Are they all right?” Kitty had joined her sister. Dressed in dark brown, her fine hair waving softly about a face that was bright with excitement, she looked as pretty as Molly had ever seen her.
Molly hesitated for just a moment before she said briskly, “Yes, they’re fine. They send their love.”
Meghan was not listening to a word. “Can we go? I’m dying to see what’s happening. If we don’t hurry it will all be over.”
“I doubt that.” Laughing, Adam limped down the steps, “Your carriage awaits, Mrs Benton.”
Suddenly the excitement that the visit to Annie and Sarah had quelled bubbled in her again. Meg’s mood was infectious, as Adam had obviously already found. Molly laughed. “Thank you, Adam. What a lovely idea.”
And so, in happy convoy with hundreds like them, they drove through the streets and squares of London, a London gone wild with delight, packed with revellers, flag-decked, ringing with the sounds of horns and sirens, of whistles and of brass bands. Eventually they left the car and joined the jostling, ecstatic crowds in Trafalgar Square, where Meghan, whose jaunty boater was by now decorated with long streamers of red, white and blue, was swept off her feet by a gangling Australian.
“Give us a kiss, darlin’.” The slightly tipsy soldier noticed Adam for the first time and added solemnly, “Beggin’ yer pardon, mate?”
Adam, grinning, waved a gracious hand. “By all means.” And the blushing Meghan received, to the applause of onlookers, not one smacking kiss but two.
“An’ one fer luck,” the lanky Australian slurred, rocking unsteadily on his feet. Then, “Tell yer what, darlin’ – how about a swap?” His bony hand whipped the tiny boater from Meg’s mass of hair and perched it on his own head, while in exchange he set his bush hat at a cheeky angle on her head. “There,” he said in some admiration, “it certainly looks a bloody sight better on you than it does on me, darlin’.” And before any of them could stop him he had staggered off into the crowds. The last they saw of him was Meghan’s boater, in the distance, bobbing ludicrously amongst the sea of heads. Meghan laughed delightedly, knowing very well the pretty and patriotic sight she made in the wide-brimmed khaki bush hat.
At Kitty’s insistence they joined the crowds who streamed down The Mall to Buckingham Palace. In the great open space outside the Palace railings the band of the Guards were playing in seemingly endless succession the national anthems of Great Britain and of all her allies. The massive crowds here were a little less raucous. Men and women in uniform stood to attention as the strains of the anthems lifted above the hubbub, and the crowds swayed slightly, listening, many a face suddenly wet with tears. When the long and solemn tribute finally came to an end there rose a deafening cheer, and the Victoria Memorial, high above their heads, reared through a sudden sea of waving, white handkerchiefs.
Adam steered his charges into St James’s Park, where the hot-chestnut vendors were doing a roaring trade, their barrows gaily decked, as was everything else, in the Union Jack or in red, white and blue bunting. As the girls hopped hot nuts from one hand to another to cool them down Adam bought three bright favours from one of the costers who had appeared as if from nowhere, his barrows loaded with flags, streamers, hats, balloons. Adam pinned one on each of his charges, kissing each of them on the cheek as he did so. Molly lifted her head, leaning to him, roused as always by the touch of his mouth on her skin, however light. Then turned and found Meghan’s eyes wide and interested upon her.
On a park bench nearby a soldier sat, unashamedly crying, sobbing into his cupped hands, a sight that stayed with Molly for ever as the true illustration of the strange, bitter happiness of the day.
It was moving towards evening and full darkness before she said, finally and resolutely, “Time to go home.”
“O-oh, but Mum—!”
“There’ll be plenty going on at home. You don’t want to miss that, do you?” The crowds about them were getting more and more rowdy as liquor began to oil the wheels of celebration. Adam, catching Molly’s slightly worried eye, nodded.
“Your mother’s right, now, Meg. Come on, back to the car.”
Stratford, like the rest of London, was en fête. Bonfires blazed, street parties, organized from nowhere, blocked off streets and squares.
They were astonished to find, just along the road from The Larches, that a trestle table had been set up from which beer and sandwiches were being dispensed while people danced to the music of a barrel organ. As the car inched through the revellers many greeted Molly and the girls in friendly fashion, and many an inquisitive stare was bent upon Adam, who endured them with panache, a gleam of laughter in his eyes. Meghan, in her element, and enjoying every minute of this unexpected parade, her peevishness at being made to come home completely forgotten, waved the dashing bush hat in the air.
“Look, there’s Lucy Regan. And Betty. Oh, we don’t have to go in yet, do we Mum? Can we stay? Can we? We won’t be late, I promise.”
Kitty said nothing, but her hazel eyes pleaded for her.
Molly smiled. “Of course. But don’t be in any later than ten.”
As Adam rolled the car to a halt outside the house the girls ran back along the road, calling to their friends. Adam looked down at Molly. “Do you want to join them?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t think I do. I’ve had enough excitement for one day. I wondered – well, would you like to come in for a quiet drink?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Effie had left a good fire burning in the parlour with an almost illegible note propped on the mantelpiece informing Molly that she had gone to the party, leaving bread and cheese in the kitchen for supper. Molly drew the curtains. Outside the flames of the bonfire leapt and flickered, a firework zipped and flew in a rain of brilliant stars. With cold clarity she suddenly remembered the night that the Zeppelin had been shot down, and she shivered.
“It doesn’t seem possible, does it? That it’s over, I mean?”
Adam had come up close behind her. Gently he turned her to face him. Their kiss lasted for long moments, punctuated by the sound of the celebrations in the street outside. As they drew apart Molly laughed, a little breathlessly. “Do you fancy some of Effie’s bread and cheese?”
“Later, perhaps. I’ve got something else for us to try. It’s in the car. I’ll get it.”
He was gone a long time. Restlessly Molly roamed the room. She stopped by the long bookshelf, ran her eyes absently along it, and stopped with a small shock of recognition at the battered and peeling spine of a book that had been the twins’ favourite in its time, as it had always been hers. She remembered with a sudden pang the look on her father’s face as she had left him staring down at a book that he could not read, saw again a small figure huddled in a chair at Christmas time, shutting out loneliness and fear with a tale of white rabbits and Cheshire cats, recalled the day that Ellen Alden had ripped that same book to shreds in her manic grief. She pushed the book a little into the shelf, straightened the row, moved away, towards the mantelpiece where Jack’s and Nancy’s photographs stood. Jack, in uniform, looked straight ahead, unsmiling and martial. The photographer, unsuccessfully, had tried to camouflage the scar on the side of his face. Very slowly Molly lifted her hand and traced it with her finger, beneath the smooth, cold glass. For a moment the room blurred around her, and, blinking, she turned away.
She wandered to the door. Adam had left the street door open; through it she saw him standing by the car, trapped in conversation with a group of laughing girls, led, predictably, by Meg, still sporting the gallant bush hat. She would probably, thought her mother drily, want to sleep in it.
Across the hall the door to the darkened offices stood open. On an impulse she moved across the passage and stood in the doorway of the office that had for so long been Nancy’s and was now, ironically, Chantale’s, the girl who was the daughter-in-law that Nancy had never seen, and who was carrying her grandchild. For a moment Molly conjured in her head the memories, aware even as she did so, that day by day the hurt was softening. Nancy, arguing about women’s rights with John Marsden. Nancy, battered, her heelless shoe brandished as a trophy. Molly crossed the room to the door of the main office, switched on the lights and advanced to the centre of the room. On her big desk lay the papers she had been working on concerning the newly-established Nancy Benton Trust. She riffled through them.
She heard Adam’s light, uneven footsteps before he spoke. “Don’t you ever stop working?” He leaned in the doorway, as he had once before, watching her.
She laughed. “I was thinking. Do you know that it’s twenty years almost to the day since I first walked through the door? I can see John now, sitting behind this very desk, scowling at me like the wolf at Red Riding Hood.”
“Did he scare you?”
“I don’t think so. My feet hurt too much.”
He came into the room towards her. Now she could see that in his hands he held an opened bottle of champagne and two tall glasses. “You’ve come a long way since that day. You’re on the way to becoming a very rich lady.” He placed the long, fluted glasses on the desk top and poured the champagne. She watched as it foamed, sparkling, into the glass.
“Yes, I suppose so.” She frowned a little, her head on one side. “You know just about all about me, don’t you? It’s all a bit one-sided, isn’t it? There’s still so much I don’t know about you. Where you come from? How you started?”
He laughed and picked up a glass in each hand. “That’s another story. You only get to hear it if you marry me.” Then, into the sudden silence he added tranquilly, “This seems an appropriate time and it’s certainly,” he glanced around, a spark of humour in his eyes, “the most appropriate place. Will you marry me?”
Outside another firework lit the sky with lovely, multi-coloured stars that blazed brightly for a few seconds then fell, fading, to earth.
Molly studied him in the flickering light, smiling. Then, very slowly, she shook her head. Love, she had discovered, was one thing, marriage quite another.
“I won’t ask you again,” he said mildly.
She moved to him, stood on tiptoe, and dropped a kiss, feather-light, on his cheek. “Oh, yes, Adam,” she said softly, “You will.”
She sensed his sudden stillness before, despite himself, laughter rose: laughter in which she joined as it lifted above the sounds of the world’s celebrations outside.