London, in those first few weeks of war, was a city of strange contrasts; a city of confidence, her streets full of young men in uniform, fresh and unblooded, off for a not unwelcome bit of excitement after these past years of peace and politics, her girls too caught by the high-hearted urgency of the time, their enthusiasm kindled by the opportunities offered by war to break from the confines that peace had imposed. Yet, of course, there was fear too, and heartbreak, and those to shake their heads at the dauntless naivety that foresaw no possibility of defeat, to wonder in the darkness of the night what their sons, lovers, husbands, brothers might have to face before the so-blithely-forecast day of victory arrived. There were fears of another sort, too – fears that no civilian population in Britain had ever had to face before: in the first month of the war Zeppelins, menacing giants of the sky, brought fire and death to beleaguered Antwerp and the reports of the raids that appeared in the British newspapers caused more than one thoughtful eye to lift to the skies of London, more than one ear to strain for the thrum of a distant engine on a clouded autumn afternoon. The possibility – some would have said the probability – of an air attack on the civilian population could not be ignored. By the darkling evenings of early October city streets were dim, their lights shaded or extinguished altogether, trams and omnibuses travelled all but unlit and private houses were blinded and curtained against the lamplight. And with the darkening of the streets came the darkening of the horizon of war. The debacle of the French defeats in August had been no more than a chauvinistic public – already sadly biased against these, their comparatively newly acquired allies – had expected. The British retreat from Mons, though a shock, could be accepted as a temporary setback. But for those with eyes to see and knowledge of the terrain over which the armies marched and fought the first signs that this was to be no swift and gallant encounter to be decided by a few brief and bloody battles were already there. At Verdun in September the French forced the Germans back to a ridge on the north bank of the River Aisne, and in the indecisive and tragically costly battle that followed for fourteen days thereafter lay the first inklings of the terrible stalemate of trench warfare. Along the rest of the Front the struggle for dominance swayed fiercely in those first few months, and unheard-of names that were to become all too familiar to British ears found their way into conversations over the dining table, the shop counter and the public bar. The Marne. Le Cateau. Guise. Flanders. And – in October – Ypres. The casualty lists grew with each day and each fierce attack. Ypres was held – just – and the small, pretty city unwittingly and unwillingly became both a symbol of freedom and a focal point of horror. The fight to save it decimated the old regular British Army. Only the remnants remained – remnants whose urgent job it would now be to train the young men who had so cheerfully obeyed their country’s call to arms, and whose experience of fighting was on the whole confined to school yard scuffles or the occasional bloody nose on a Saturday night. By November the flaming, clamorous line of the Western Front had been drawn in shed blood and barbed wire through France and Flanders and the armies were dug in as best they could be. Yet the situation could not be said to be equal, for the enemy had gained a good deal of his objective in those first fierce months and was now ready grimly to defend it, and so the German dispositions were made in concrete and steel and with an eye to permanence. Not so the Allies. To win this war they must attack, advance – so there were few well-serviced or solid bunkers for Jacques or Tommy or his Commonwealth mates. On the whole he crouched in and swore at a hastily-scraped hole in the ground shored up with corrugated iron and sandbags and – more and more frequently as the weeks moved on and the constant bombardment smashed the ground – knee-deep in filthy water. For now the gods had taken a hand in man’s ill-managed affairs, and the rain had started.
For Anna – as indeed for most women – the greatest and most immediate effect of the war was in seeing some of the menfolk of her family don uniform and leave for France. The first – and perhaps the most surprising – departure was Ralph’s, his chaplain’s collar incongruous beneath his khaki uniform jacket, his gentle smile unchanged.
“But – Ralph! Why?” She was at a loss for words.
They strolled in the garden at Bayswater. The grass and paths were heaped and scattered with fallen leaves that skittered in small swirling whirlpools in the light breeze. The sky was bright and peaceful with sunshine.
For the space of perhaps half a dozen quiet paces he did not reply. Then, “I’m not sure I can answer that myself,” he said. “It has nothing to do with – with bravery – or patriotism—”
“What then?”
“It’s,” he hesitated, “I think it has something to do with James,” he said very quietly.
She looked a question.
He shook his head. “Dead – buried friendless in a strange land. Someone must have prayed for him. I hope so, anyway.” She glanced at him again, sharply. She had always believed Ralph to be closer to James than to any of them, yet in those years since her brother’s death she had never suspected this haunting.
“And perhaps too,” Ralph continued, “it’s that if my flock goes to war then it ill becomes me to hide beneath Mother Church’s skirts.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. No one would have accused you of that. And anyway you’re surely over age? They’re calling for volunteers between eighteen and thirty years old. I’m thirty-seven. If my arithmetic serves me well that makes you thirty-five.”
His smile this time had in it the faintest hint of self-mockery. “They aren’t so particular about parsons.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “I still don’t understand.”
“Anna – in war, always, men are close to death. To pain. To fear. God can help them. Heal them. Strengthen them. Keep them whole.” He gestured, a small, self-deprecating lift of the hand. “Perhaps through me. I have to try.”
She could find no counter to that. They paced for a moment in silence, then stopped by the small overgrown pool that had been such a childhood favourite. “Michael’s going, you know,” Anna said.
“Yes, he told me.”
“It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t have to go, either. He’s a year above thirty.” She broke off a small dead twig from the tree by which they were standing and snapped it, quickly and nervously, in her fingers. “I can’t think what’s happened to everyone.”
“War’s happened to everyone.”
“I suppose so.” She threw the pieces of twig into the clouded water, watched them spin in slow, lazy circles. “Ralph – what do you think? I mean – will it all be over by Christmas as some people are saying? I read in the paper the other day that it could go on for as long as three years.” Nicholas, tall, fair, handsome Nicholas with his bright, bright eyes was nearly fourteen years old and already mad for a Subaltern’s uniform. She turned troubled eyes to her brother. “It couldn’t last that long could it?”
He laughed, gently exasperated. “My dear Anna – I’m a chaplain, not a general. How would I know? We must just pray that it does not.”
“Yes, of course.” Her tone did not indicate that she took much encouragement from that course of action.
“What will you do?” he asked. “Have you thought? Will you stay in London?”
“Why yes, of course. The boys are safely away at school, so we don’t have to worry about them. And we’re hoping that Victoria will join some friends in the country. Joss is doing something mysterious with all that money he’s making – armaments or something, I believe. It’s all very hush hush and he spends a lot of time away, in the north—” Her voice was even; any wife talking about her busy, absent husband. Ralph – no man’s fool despite his gentle nature – felt a twinge of sympathy for his sister. Anna needed warmth, love; he doubted that his brother-in-law had ever provided her with either. “And as for me,” Anna continued, and grinned suddenly, reminding him, briefly, of the mischievous, teasing older sister of childhood, “I’m not altogether useless, you know. I’ve already been co-opted on to God knows how many committees – Red Cross, Belgian Refugees, Ambulances for the Front – there must be half a dozen at least. Mind you, that’s nothing compared to Arabella. She’s careering around London on a motorcycle, you know. Must be rather fun, I should think.”
Ralph looked as near to shock as his calm, pleasant face allowed. “Good Lord! You aren’t thinking of doing something like that, are you?”
She laughed aloud at that. “Of course not! What do you take me for? I’m no Arabella to believe that we women should don uniform and fight shoulder to shoulder with the men—” “Heaven forbid.”
“Quite. Someone’s got to look after things at home. While there’s still something to look after, that is. Still – I do suppose that if this business goes on for very long women are going to find themselves as involved as men. If General Kitchener keeps taking our men and the armaments factories entice our domestic help away we’re going to find ourselves doing a little more than twiddling our thumbs and watching for Zeppelins.”
“You’ve never twiddled your thumbs in your life.”
She grinned again. “That’s true.”
“And what of your own work?”
She shrugged a little. “That I’m afraid will have to take a back seat for the duration. Designing expensive jewellery could hardly be said to be the most patriotic or useful thing to do at the moment. My talents lately, such as they are, have been turned to designing posters and raising money.”
“And what of Sophie? How is she?”
The small, sudden silence was enough to make him turn and look at her. Then, “She’s pregnant,” Anna said, flatly. “With Richard’s child.”
He stared at her, his kindly face stricken. “Oh, no.”
She nodded. “There’s no doubt, I’m afraid.”
“But that’s – terrible. A tragedy for the child—”
“Yes. So everyone thinks. Except Sophie. Her father had to be physically restrained from grabbing the nearest pistol. Louisa is devastated. Alex nearly had a heart attack. And Alice – well, I’d better not go into what the charming Alice said, or I might have a heart attack myself.” Anna sighed, and the false bright, edge to her voice died. “But Sophie – Sophie is perfectly happy. Richard will marry her, she says, as soon as he is able. Perhaps she’s right. I don’t know. Alice can’t keep him from her forever, can she?”
“Do they see each other? Sophie and Richard?”
“No. Alice has seen to that. At the Military Academy – you know both the boys are at Woolwich now? – he’s been put on his honour not to approach the girl. You know Richard. That’s as effective as locking him in a cell. Sophie writes to him, I know. But he isn’t allowed to answer. Yet she has perfect and utter faith that he’ll come to her when he can.”
“Perhaps he will.”
“He’d better,” Anna said, unexpectedly grimly. “Or I’ll shoot him myself.”
He smiled at her vehemence. “You’re very fond of her, aren’t you?”
“Yes I am. More than I knew.” More than of my own daughter – not for the first time the guilty thought flicked through Anna’s mind. She could never understand why Victoria’s pleasant docility could aggravate her to screaming point whilst Sophie’s headstrong and volatile nature, which others found so difficult, sometimes exasperated her, but at the same time always endeared the girl to her and touched her heart. “Our Sophie, I’m afraid,” she added wryly, “is that kind of person. She brings out extremes in other people.”
“Do you think—” Ralph hesitated. He looked faintly uncomfortable, “Do you think I should, well, talk to her?”
Anna could not stop her sudden laughter. “Oh, Ralph, dear! And say what? That she’s a naughty girl and should not have done such a thing? Or that God forgives her wickedness? She’d laugh at you.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Of course you didn’t.” She was instantly contrite. “But – that’s what Sophie would think you meant. Whatever you said. No, Ralph, leave Sophie to go her own way. I’m coming to think that’s the best thing to do.” She turned to him and took his hands in hers, her face suddenly serious. “When do you leave?”
“In two days.”
“You’ll be careful? Truly careful?”
He kissed her cheek. “Of course.”
He left her there by the pool that had so many associations with their childhood, and she watched his retreating back with a gleam of anxiety in her pale eyes. The uniform he wore – so strange – so very alien to all she knew of her peace-loving brother – was like a symbol of all that had changed in the world, all that was threatened. She felt the faint and surprising sickness of fear creep through her bowels. Nothing she had read, nothing she had heard or seen so far, not even the tragic lists of the dead had so brought home to her the reality of the war. “God keep you.” She was startled to discover that she had spoken the words aloud.
The celebration of Christmas 1914 was at home inevitably overshadowed by nostalgia for the past and fear for the future, and in the trenches by the mud, the enemy bombardment and the bloody weather. For a few brief hours along a few brief miles of battlefront enemies met, exchanged cigarettes, addresses, photographs and then went back to their guns and their avowed intention of wiping each other out; a strange interlude that illustrated the best and the worst in human nature. Ralph Rose, his well-attended evening Communion over, sat, still and alone, looking out across the barbed wire, allowing himself the luxury of his first cigarette of the day and wondering at the lunatic inconsistency of man.
It was in January that the much-feared airships made their first foray across the Channel and attacked the English east coast. Four people were killed and much damage was done to property; and Londoners slept even more uneasily in their beds when they heard the news. Across the water the guns rumbled, the shells sang their song of death and blood seeped into the ditch-pitted slime and filth that had, just a few months before, been peaceful cultivated countryside. At Neuve Chapelle the British Army lost thirteen thousand men in a battle in which all the ground that was gained was taken in the first three hours yet that lasted for a costly and exhausting three days. For one small, wrecked village it was a desperate price to pay; a price it was becoming increasingly obvious would be demanded again and again for every square foot of advance.
In Bayswater, Anna found herself fighting an unexpected battle of her own.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I don’t want to upset you. Or – defy you.” Victoria, flushed with the stress of a confrontation she would have given blood to avoid, clenched her hands hard upon an already ruined lace handkerchief and, contriving to look contrite and defiant at one and the same time, stumbled obstinately on through an obviously prepared speech, her eyes avoiding her mother’s astonished face. “I will not run to the country and hide my head whilst the rest of the world fights a war. I’m not a child.” She stopped, the sensible and reasoned words running dry on her.
Anna, as much amazed as actually angry at this defiance, waited.
Victoria lifted her head. The softly pretty face was as intense as her mother had ever seen it, the wide, violet eyes dark with unwonted agitation. “I want to be a nurse, Mother. I want it more than anything in the world. I don’t want to go to France, or drive an ambulance, or be a heroine. I just want to be a nurse. Here, in London. I want to help. To do something.”
In the silence, rain drummed against the window.
“You’re very young—” Anna started to say.
“I’m seventeen years old. I’ll wait till I’m eighteen if I must, though I’d rather not. Boys of my age died at Neuve Chapelle, Mother. No one told them they were too young.”
Anna, nonplussed, shook her head. “Shouldn’t you wait? Perhaps go away for a while – think about it.”
“No. I am sure. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
And she was. To everyone’s astonishment Victoria stuck to her guns with a stubborn determination that no one – not least herself – had suspected she possessed. Faced with such obduracy Anna gave in; indeed, for the first time in her daughter’s short life she found herself regarding her as an individual, and one to be admired. Victoria’s training, at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Smithfield, was gruelling, and nothing in her sheltered life had in any way prepared her for it: no one who knew her well believed that she would stick it out for more than a week. Yet she scrubbed floors, emptied bedpans, ran messages, washed soiled dressings for fourteen hours a day and cheerfully thrived upon it. Her meals were snatched and her sleep interrupted. She lost weight, gained blisters and confidence. By choice, to be close to her work, she roomed with another girl near the hospital; and from her very first visit home it was obvious that Victoria had found a vocation and the strength to pursue it. Anna’s respect for her daughter grew, and Victoria – tired, thinner than perhaps suited her, her hands red and rough – nevertheless glowed in the warmth of her mother’s approval at last.
For the men in the trenches spring brought little relief. Whilst at home the cuckoo called and the buds of April swelled and burst in the growth of a new season, the shattered woodlands of France and Belgium were stripped of life, trees and earth blasted to the very image of death by the relentless bombardment and the traffic of war. Yet even there could be found strange, odd little pockets of green, pockets where nature struggled to keep her promise despite man’s madness; and it was in one of these that Ralph Rose found himself pausing one late April day – a small copse, still miraculously green, in which could still be heard, incredibly, above the rumble of the guns, the sound of bird song. In the distance, set in that saucer of fertile land that had become a death trap beneath the German guns on its rim, the little, shattered town of Ypres reached skeletal masonry fingers to the wide evening sky. Ralph had been to visit a friend – an unlikely friend some would say – a Roman Catholic Padre attached to an Algerian division of the French army. The two men had met on the football field, friendly rivals, had shared a glass of wine later and had found a companionship together despite the difference of dogma that divided them that each had found difficult to achieve with the men to whose spiritual well-being they tended in such utterly impossible circumstances. On the way back now to his own dugout Ralph stopped to view this small, miraculous oasis of green and to enjoy the luxury of a solitary cigarette. He settled back comfortably at the foot of a small tree, his back against its trunk. A shell whistled above him. He did not even duck. Seconds later he heard it explode. He tilted his head back against the tree and watched the smoke from his cigarette drift fragrantly in the light wind.
Another shell. And another.
He drew a long, weary lungful of smoke. They’re stepping it up. What’s that in aid of, I wonder? Another attack? Another barbarous exercise where men are forced to advance over the bodies of their dying comrades or their dead enemies – or to fall beside them, to mingle blood and guts and brains upon the putrid ground of this useless, indefensible Salient.
He drew up his legs and for a brief instant dropped his head to his knees, curled in a foetal position, his shoulders slumped. God, it’s awful. So truly awful.
He lifted his head, drew deeply again on the cigarette. How did I ever believe that I could serve God in this hell? Where is He here? What good am I? To Him? To anyone?
The bombardment was noticeably heavier. Automatically he reached for his helmet and clapped it on his head; although behind the front line the copse was well within the range of the German guns. The birds had stopped singing. He stood up, took one last pull at his cigarette then dropped it to the ground and crushed it with his foot, smiling wryly to himself at his own foolish carefulness. He should be getting back. If this kept up there would be need of him in the dressing station, if nowhere else.
He left the shelter of the trees in a fast, ducking run that had become second nature when this close to the forward, sniper-ridden trenches. In a shower of stones and dirt he slid into a trench. A dark-skinned man in unfamiliar uniform grinned cheerily at him and started to speak. Then the smiling mouth gaped, the eyes bulged and the man’s body lifted and buckled as the ground disintegrated beneath them and the concussed air roared. The body hit Ralph, knocking him flat. He clenched his eyes and his mouth against the warmth and wetness that invaded them. Revulsion churned in him and savagely he wrenched from beneath the corpse, burying his face in his hands, wiping the blood and slime from his skin.
The world was suddenly, heavily, quiet.
Somewhere close, a man moaned.
Ralph gathered his knees beneath him, with enormous effort straightened his arms, levered himself to a kneeling position. The Algerian soldier who moments before had been ready to greet him so cheerfully grimaced emptily at the menacingly still sky. Two others lay sprawled in death, the one headless, the other untouched and apparently sleeping. An arm, encased still in a dark blue sleeve, lay a foot from where Ralph crouched, dazed and terribly afraid. All the fear, all the terror that he had known and fought against in the last months, rose now to his throat in sickness and he vomited violently. He was trembling uncontrollably. He staggered to his feet, his mind wiped clean of thought by panic. He stumbled along the wrecked and bloody trench, his teeth clenched against the sobs of horror that were forming in his throat.
“Maman. Maman!”
He almost trod upon the boy who lay sprawled upon his back, the terrible injuries glinting red and black upon his body, his soft child’s face untouched except by terror and by tears. “Je veux Maman.”
Ralph lifted a foot to step over him. The blinding eyes detected the shadow and a small hand lifted. “Maman – aide-moi.”
The man stood for a still moment looking down at the dying boy.
Run. You can do nothing for him. Run. Save yourself.
The child was crying still for his mother, tears on his smooth cheeks, one hand lifted beseechingly to the tall form that towered above him.
Ralph dropped to his knees, took the hand in his own. The young fingers clung like death.
Ralph lifted his head. That strange tense silence still held, infinitely threatening, infinitely terrifying. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” To his own surprise his quiet voice was firm. The small hand clenched and unclenched upon his. The boy muttered, but he was calmer, the human contact and the gentle voice comforting him.
“He leadeth me beside the still waters—”
Somewhere in the distance a man shouted, the voice brutal with urgency and warning.
The boy was quiet now, his eyes focused upon Ralph’s face.
Men ran past, shouting – ran towards the beleaguered town, their weapons discarded in panic, their streaming eyes fear-filled.
“He restoreth my soul—”
Still steadily reciting the comforting words, both of his hands trapped in the boy’s, Ralph lifted his head. The air was acrid. Eerily in the dusky half-darkness a heavy, greenish vapour wreathed upon the evening breeze across the blasted landscape, drifted balefully towards him. Men were shouting, mortal dread in their voices.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—” There was a tremor now in his voice that it was utterly beyond him to control, but if the boy heard it he showed no sign. The strange, rhythmic foreign words, spoken in that even, gentle voice were comfort enough. The hands held strong. The young mouth relaxed, beyond pain.
“Yet will I fear no evil.”
The gas enveloped the great coils of barbed wire, rolled through the outer defences, advanced silent, inexorable and utterly merciless. Ralph lifted his head and his voice now was strong.
“Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me, in the presence of mine enemies—” He paused for a brief moment at that. “Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over.”
Noiseless, deadly, all his fears crept towards him.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the House of the Lord for ever.”
The boy was dead before the chlorine reached them.
The news of Ralph’s death reached the house in which he had spent his childhood within a day of a new life entering it. Sophie held her daughter close and looked at Anna.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Anna. Truly sorry. I didn’t know Uncle Ralph very well – but I think he must have been very brave.” The young eyes could not hold grief for very long when the soft head of her baby with its fine, downy hair, nestled softly and warmly in the crook of her arm.
“Yes,” Anna said. All her tears had been cried. Oddly, the news of Ralph’s death had come as no surprise. It was almost as if she had expected it from that moment he had walked from her by the pool in the garden. She reached a finger to the baby’s tiny hand. “How is she?”
“Wonderful.”
“Have you decided on a name yet?”
“Yes—” Sophie hesitated. “That is – I know what I’d like to call her—” The emphasis was on the personal pronoun. “I thought – Felicity.”
Anna smiled. “What a lovely idea. Happiness.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Early May sunshine streamed through the window. The room was decked with flowers. Anna sat on the bed and regarded her new great-niece with favour.
“Aunt Anna?”
“Mmm?” Anna’s eyes were still on the baby.
“I can’t ever thank you enough. For everything.”
Anna shook her head.
“Truly I can’t. I don’t know what might have happened to me – to us – without you. It isn’t everyone who’d take a—” her wide mouth ever humorous, twitched to a swift smile and with a pang Anna thought that she looked the very image of her estranged father “—a fallen woman into their home.”
Anna stood up briskly. “Nonsense. I do it all the time. Now – what would you like for tea? I’ve some eggs. Queued for them myself. Could you manage one?”
“That would be a lovely idea.” Sophie watched her to the door. “Aunt Anna?”
Anna turned.
Sophie’s strong young face was suddenly uncertain, her eyes, avoiding her aunt’s, turned upon the child. “Do you think they might let him see us? Just once?” The frailty of need rang in her voice no matter how hard she tried to disguise it.
Anna swallowed. “I don’t know, my dear,” she said at last. “I really don’t know.”
She faced Alice in wrath, the impatience and dislike she had for the past hour been at pains to hide clear upon her face. “You can’t mean it. Alice – you can’t!”
Alex moved uncomfortably in his chair. Both women ignored him. Alice turned to the window, stood with her back to the room looking down on to the wide lawns of Bissetts. Beneath the trees a uniformed man upon crutches stood in conversation with another in a wheelchair. A nurse bustled across the grass towards them, a tray in her hands.
Alice turned back to face her sister-in-law. Her gaze was absolutely steady. “I have already told you, Anna, that I do not accept that – that girl’s child as Richard’s. The whole unsavoury affair has nothing to do with us, or with him. As to the idea of his visiting the girl – it is preposterous. He is well settled at the Academy. He has forgotten her. There can be absolutely no question of our giving our permission for him to go to Bayswater. The answer is no. Absolutely no. And I’ll thank you not to mention the girl’s name in this house again. For your own sake I should advise you to send the little hoyden and her fatherless brat back to her parents and leave it at that.”
Anna controlled her surging temper with an effort, and a few deep breaths. “Alice – has it occurred to you that in a few short months Richard could be caught up in this beastly war? Doesn’t that change your attitude one little bit?”
“Don’t be absurd. Why should it? In the first place I have no doubt that the war will be long over before the boys are commissioned, and in the second – circumstances do not change facts.” Alice’s voice was severe and reasoned, utter conviction underlay every word. Anna met Alex’s eyes. He looked away. Whatever happened to brave General Gordon, Anna found herself wondering tartly. “The child is not Richard’s.” Alice said, firmly and in Anna’s ears the words had the ring of a determinedly repeated phrase. “And there’s an end to it. Now, Anna, will you take tea before you leave?”
Anna stood up. “No. Thank you.” She found it hard to be civil. She reached for bag and gloves. In her mind’s eyes the image of Sophie’s face hovered, as she had seen it last, obstinately cheerful, apparently uncaring, the eyes desperate with oft-denied hope. “Damn you, Alice,” she said. “You’ll ruin these youngsters.”
Alice said nothing, and no trace of expression disfigured the taut, attractive features of her face.
In the silence, Anna left. With the downstairs rooms and most of the servants’ quarters given over to a convalescent home, the family were living in those first floor rooms through which Rupert and Richard, Sophie and Maria had hunted so happily the year before. On the landing she heard movement behind her and paused, turning.
“Anna.” Her brother stopped, his heavy face flushed.
She waited.
“Tell Richard—” his voice was low and he could not hide his anxiety that his wife might overhear “—tell him he has my permission to visit Sophie. Just the once, mind you. And only, of course, if he wants to.”
She stared at him. Then, impulsively, she stepped forward to fling her arms about his neck. “Bless you,” she whispered.
Embarrassed, he extricated himself. “Explain to Richard,” he said hastily, “that it’s – best kept between ourselves.”
“I will.” She kissed him quickly on his cheek then ran swiftly down the stairs.
“Alex?” Alice’s voice was sharp. “Are you there?”
“Coming my love,” Alex said.
They had not seen each other for more than nine months; an age, a lifetime – and yet, yesterday. He stood a little uncertainly just inside the closed door, unfamiliar in his uniform, his cap in his hand, yet so dearly, so achingly familiar that it was as if every dream of him had crystallized into reality here before her, flesh and bone and smiling hazel eyes. They were both, for a long moment, speechless.
“Goodness,” she said at last, lightly. “You do look smart!”
The cap spun on to a chair and he crossed the room in three strides. “Sophie! Sophie!” He hugged her to him, hurting her, taking her breath. When he released her at last, her eyes were shining with laughter and happiness. “May I breathe now?”
He held her at arm’s length. “You look wonderful! Absolutely wonderful! More beautiful than ever.”
She flushed, grinning. “But not as beautiful as you, Mister Officer Cadet Rose! Just look at you! How long did it take you to clean those buttons?”
He grimaced, then laughed. “Hours!” They looked at each other then for a long, quiet moment, each searching the other’s face with love and with a certain anxiety that neither had the guile to hide. Richard saw before him a girl who in the months past had grown to womanhood; she for her part saw a young man immaculate in his khaki, brass and leather gleaming; a young man whose negligent slouch had been replaced by the carriage of a soldier, and whose face had leaned and sharpened.
“Oh, Richard,” she said, and her voice despite all her efforts trembled.
He caught her to him again, crushing her, pressing his cheek into the soft crown of her hair, his eyes shut, his face clenched against unmanly tears.
At last she pulled away, dashing a hand across her eyes, half-laughing. “There’s someone here just dying to meet you.” She caught his hand and led him across the room to where a small, pink-draped crib stood beside the window. Richard stood for a long time, staring down at the sleeping scrap whose fine, fair lashes curled against apple cheeks and whose milky mouth pursed, firm as a rosebud.
“Good God,” he said at last.
Sophie laughed, the tension broken. “You can touch her, you know. She won’t break.”
Very gingerly he reached a long finger to his daughter’s curled hand. His skin looked dark and calloused beside the pale softness of the child’s. Felicity twitched and stirred, her mouth making small sucking motions, and he pulled his hand back quickly. Sophie laughed again, sheer happiness in the sound. She leaned to Richard, he put an arm about her shoulders, and they stood looking down at their daughter. “We have two more hours,” Sophie said softly. “Two whole hours. And I want to hear everything – absolutely everything.” She caught his hands and tugged him to the sofa. “Are you happy at the Academy? What do you do there? Is it hard? Do you—”
“Whoa!” He stopped her busy mouth with a laughing kiss that quickly became more serious. When they drew away from each other at last Sophie’s colour was high and his breathing was uneven. “Now,” he said, his voice almost steady, “I’ll answer your questions. Yes – I love it at the Shop.”
“The Shop?”
“The Academy. As for what we do there – we get up at the most beastly unearthly hour you can imagine, work till we drop and fall into bed exhausted each evening. We get hardly any time to ourselves and I’ve never been so tired in my life. We march, and ride, and polish and clean, we’re lectured and shouted at and drilled till we drop – and—” he gestured, laughing “—and I just love every minute of it. There’s something I have to ask you—” He took her hands, drew her to him. “Sophie, darling, could you be a soldier’s wife? I don’t mean just for the duration of the war – I mean a real soldier’s wife. For that’s what I should like to be. A regular soldier. Could you take it, do you think? Would you marry a poor soldier?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “And yes, and yes, and yes. So that’s settled. You’ll have to do more than take the King’s shilling to get rid of me, my lad.”
Their hands were linked. They sat for a moment, locked in each other’s smiles. Then, “We still have to wait,” he said. “My parents – especially Mother – are still—”
“I know,” she said, swiftly, stopping him. “And I don’t care. I’ll wait for ever if I have to. For ever. Especially now. Now that I know—” She ducked her head suddenly, avoiding his eyes.
“Know what?”
“That you still love me. Still want me.” Her voice was low. “I told everyone you did. That I knew you wouldn’t forget me. Wouldn’t let them part us.” She lifted her face and he saw, in that instant, all that his loved and lovely girl had gone through – was still willing to go through – for his sake. His hands tightened upon hers. In her crib Felicity stirred, hiccoughed a little, and let out a yell that might have been heard three streets away. “Our daughter, I’m afraid,” Sophie said almost composedly, disentangling her hands, “has inherited my temper. Shall you be able to stand both of us do you think?”
Their precious time flew. They spoke of personal things – of the time next year when both Rupert and Richard would receive their commissions, of Sophie’s plans to remain here at Bayswater with the baby, of Anna’s kindnesses and Alice’s intransigence, of Sophie’s wretchedness at the unhappiness she had caused her father. Inevitably they spoke too of the war, of the sinking a couple of weeks before of the Cunard liner Lusitania with the loss of more than a thousand lives, of the recent and long-expected heavy raid upon the East End of London and of Sophie’s fears for her parents and sister, living as they did so close to the river – the airships’ road to the heart of London – and the docks. But Anna’s clock prettily chimed the quarter-hours away and before they knew it the enemy, time, had defeated them and they fell silent. At last the moment came when they approached the crib together and stood, hands linked, gazing down at their daughter.
“May I hold her? Just for a moment – before I go?”
“Of course.” Sophie bent and expertly scooped the warm, soft bundle from the cot, deftly arranging voluminous skirt, shawl and lacy bonnet. “There.” She laid Felicity in her father’s arms. He cradled her awkwardly, studying the tiny face intently. Sophie, watching them both, blinked.
“She’s going to be just like you,” he said.
“Heaven forbid.” The words were heartfelt and only half-humorous.
His mouth twitched at that. She relieved him of his burden, laid the child back in the cot. “And what shall you do when she comes to you and tells you that some strange and daring young man has stolen her heart?” she asked softly.
He reached for her, rocked her gently against him. “I shall ask, ‘Does he love you?’”
“And if the answer is yes?”
“Then he shall have her with my blessing. For I shall have her mother; and nothing in the world could mean more to me than that.”
They stood, each encircled in the other’s arms for a moment, utterly wordless. Then he stepped back. She picked up his peaked cap, brushed it off with gentle fingers, handed it to him. “Will we see each other again, do you think? Before—” she could not say it “—well, before you’re twenty-one?” She tried to grin, and failed.
“I’ll try. I promise I will. But – you do understand? I gave my word – I had to give my word – I couldn’t see any other way.”
She stopped his mouth with her fingers. “Of course, I understand. You know I do. And one day we’ll be together. All three of us. No one will stop us.”
He kissed her swiftly, settled his cap upon his head. She watched from the door as he ran swiftly and gracefully down the stairs. At the foot he looked back, raised a hand to his cap, and was gone.
She did not go to the window to watch him down the street. There would have been little point: she could not have seen him for her tears.