Lucy sat on the side of her bed; she was confused and rather bewildered. I misread Oswald’s intention, that’s all, she considered. How silly of me. I thought for a moment that he was going to kiss my lips. She touched her mouth. But of course he wasn’t; he wouldn’t … would he? They were cousins, sister and brother almost – and yet neither of those. And then Aunt Nora walking in as she did; whatever did she think? She seemed astounded and confused, just as I am, though she covered it very well.
I mustn’t let Oswald think I’m embarrassed, because I’m not, of course I’m not, and I don’t want him to feel awkward. We’ve had a good relationship throughout our lives, mostly anyway, although there have been times when – I don’t know quite how to put my finger on it, but I’ve felt changes in him from time to time when we have met.
She sighed and decided that she wouldn’t go back to bed after all. She was wide awake anyway. She’d get dressed and go out and ask Oswald if he wanted to come, just so that he would know that everything was all right between them. Because it is!
But still she lingered. The illogical thing is, she contemplated, that although I realize now that his intention was not to kiss my lips but my cheek as he always does – her fingers strayed to her mouth once more and she swallowed – I actually wanted him to.
She came downstairs again, dressed to go out and carrying her coat.
‘You haven’t had breakfast, Lucy,’ Nora said, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. ‘Do have something, or we can have an early lunch if you’d prefer. I have to do some shopping this afternoon. Eleanor has run out of a particular cotton thread that she needs and I said I’d get it from the haberdasher’s. Would you like to come or have you something else planned?’
‘I’ll just have some toast for now, Aunt, thank you. Can I smell coffee? Mmm, yes, please.’ She sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I thought that I’d visit Max’s parents. I don’t know them, but I know Jenny, so I thought I’d drop in and offer my condolences. Do you suppose their shops will be open?’
‘So Mary said. She doesn’t really approve of Max’s father. He only shut the shops for one day apparently after they’d been given the news about Max. So very sad. I recall him as such a polite boy, and so handsome.’
‘Yes,’ Lucy murmured. ‘He was.’ Her lips lifted in a gentle smile. ‘I fell in love with him when we went on that first picnic, do you remember? I decided that I was going to marry him.’ She laughed softly.
Nora shook her head and said she couldn’t recall and Lucy silently thought of Josh and Stanley in France or Flanders, and then of Henry Warrington. Where was he? Edie said she’d met him when she was last at home. She pressed her lips together, fervently hoping that this dreadful war would end soon, before it devastated more families by taking the lives of more young men.
She looked up as she felt Oswald’s hand on her shoulder. He gently patted it and she wondered how long he’d been standing there.
‘I thought I’d walk across to see Max Glover’s family,’ she told him, ‘and then Dolly Morris. Would you like to come?’
They were interrupted by Mary, who bustled into the kitchen. ‘Sorry I’m so late,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’ve just seen somebody who told me about another of ’Hull Pals being killed. I don’t know him, but then she went on to say …’ She raised her eyebrows and went on quickly. ‘Well, she’s a proper bearer of bad news is Mrs Thompson, but she told me that Dr Warrington’s son-in-law – Miss Elizabeth’s husband, I don’t remember his name – is missing.’
They all three put a hand on their chests; all had thought for a split second that she was going to say Henry’s name.
‘It upsets everyone, doesn’t it?’ Nora murmured. ‘Especially those with loved ones fighting.’ She gazed at Oswald and then turned away as if to busy herself.
‘Yes,’ Oswald said quietly to Lucy. ‘I’ll come with you, though I might not be welcome. People expect every man they meet to be in uniform.’
They passed by the Warrington house but did not call, thinking that it was perhaps too soon. The blinds at the windows were drawn closed.
‘I don’t know if Elizabeth and her husband ever lived here,’ Lucy said as they passed by. ‘He’s from somewhere in the south, I seem to recall.’
‘Let’s take a detour,’ Oswald said, steering her across the road towards Bond Street. ‘Let’s go to the old town and see the Zeppelin damage for ourselves.’
‘We’ll go to Holy Trinity,’ she agreed, ‘and see how badly it was hit. Mary told me that it was going to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to repair it. Thank goodness she moved out to Mason Street when she did. She told me the old properties along High Street have been badly damaged and that there was a huge crater in the middle of the street.’
The ancient church was covered in scaffolding and the stained glass windows were boarded up; random damage had been done to other buildings and a bomb had fallen on a nearby store, causing a great conflagration that had damaged nearby properties.
Oswald gazed around Market Place; some of the shops were still in the process of repair. ‘There’s nowhere for people to shelter,’ he muttered. ‘And little warning is given until it’s too late.’
‘The Big Lizzie, the warning siren is called,’ Lucy said. ‘It can be heard all over the city, apparently.’
‘Yes, I dare say,’ Oswald said. ‘But where do you run to when you hear it? Hull is a sitting target.’ He contemplated. ‘Hundreds of people have been killed or injured. I’m just wondering if Ma and Pa would consider moving out to Pearson Park until the war is over.’
Lucy gasped. ‘Are you serious? Do you really believe that the bombing of civilian targets will worsen?’
‘I do and it will,’ he said fervently. ‘Hull and other east coast towns are prime objectives, not only when enemy aircraft are coming in to English air space but also when they leave. They don’t want to carry unnecessary weight when flying back home so they ditch their lethal cargo before they reach the sea. And besides,’ he said gloomily, ‘one of their aims is to terrorize the civilians, and they’re certainly succeeding in that!’
‘How is it that you know all these things?’ she asked.
He tapped the side of his nose and said wryly, ‘Can’t say, but I hear talk. Sometimes we have eminent scientists visiting us – I told you about Dr Haldane?’
Lucy nodded.
‘Well, for example,’ he went on, ‘some distinguished experts, including Haldane, come to discuss the properties of different types of poison gas, or the type of respirator that the military should carry.’
He could have told her more, but he didn’t. For one thing, much of the research he was working on was top secret, and for another it would be grossly repugnant to anyone, even an intelligent, professional young woman like Lucy, to comprehend that any nation would choose to inflict such a grotesque weapon of war on another. He struggled with the understanding of it himself.
‘Did I tell you,’ he said, as an afterthought, ‘that I met the king?’
‘No!’ she said in astonishment. ‘Really? How?’
‘King George gets about a bit you know,’ he teased. ‘He likes to know what’s happening. I forgot to tell my mother, too.’ He grinned again. ‘Remind me when we get back, will you? I know she’ll be impressed!’
They walked on towards Queen Street, and he suggested they stopped for coffee before moving on towards the pier to have a look at the Humber before turning back. Lucy recommended the café she had been to with Edie, where they could have a slice of delicious cake too.
As they waited for the coffee, Oswald tried to decide whether to tell Lucy what he had decided to do after talking it over with William. Perhaps it would be better to wait until she’d left for France and then tell her by letter. He was going to apply to the RAMC, and would be almost certain to be sent abroad if he were accepted. There would be no certainty, of course, but if I put in a request to be with the Hull Pals who I know are in France … but then they’re in Flanders too, and of course Lucy herself could be sent anywhere … He let out a breath of frustration. Life was so uncertain.
He saw the questioning look on Lucy’s face, as if she knew he was chewing something over, but fortunately the coffee and cake were brought just then and he forced a big smile to avoid any questions; and, he thought with some relief, at least she didn’t seem at all embarrassed about being caught in his arms and about to be kissed most inappropriately. A lapse of judgement on my part, and what a blessing that my mother walked in when she did. Though heaven knows what she made of it.
They walked to the pier after finishing their coffee, past the boarded up damaged buildings, and then turned to head back through High Street and across town to Charles Street.
They soon found the Glovers’ grocery shop, where a queue of women with shopping baskets were waiting patiently to be served. Lucy saw Jenny behind the counter and a woman whom she took to be her mother; both were pale-faced and there was no banter between them and the customers, but she noticed that after handing over their money many of the women gave Jenny and her mother a gentle pat on their hands; a small demonstration of understanding.
They waited in the queue until they reached the front. Mrs Glover had gone into the back room so it was Jenny who looked up. ‘Yes, miss?’
‘Do you remember me, Jenny? I’m Lucy Thornbury, Edie’s friend.’
‘Oh.’ Jenny’s face lifted in a hesitant smile. ‘Of course! Sorry. It’s been ages.’
‘It has.’ Lucy was relieved not to have to explain herself. She turned to introduce Oswald. ‘This is my cousin Oswald. I don’t think you’ve met. We – we heard about Max and are so terribly sorry. We both wanted to come and give you our …’ She suddenly felt the tears begin to fall and put her hand to her mouth, unable to express the words of comfort that she wanted to give. Childhood memories came to the fore and they would be all that was left; there was no chance of Max’s fulfilling any dreams or ambitions that he might have had; no long life with a wife and family. Everything gone.
‘Thank you.’ Jenny took out a handkerchief to stem her own tears. ‘We are finding it so hard, my mother and me; my father won’t talk about it. He’s hardly said a word since we heard the news, but he insists we keep the shops open as if nothing’s happened.’
‘It’s his way of coping,’ Oswald said softly, putting his hand on Lucy’s shoulder. ‘He doesn’t want to acknowledge it; and deep down he’s angry and hurt. Sooner or later it will hit him hard and he’ll need your comfort.’
‘That’s what Mam says.’ Jenny choked back her tears. ‘But we need time to grieve, and think about what we’ll do without our Max, not keep on serving groceries.’
Just then her mother came back into the shop and looked at them all. ‘What’s this?’
‘Lucy Thornbury,’ Lucy introduced herself. ‘And this is my cousin Oswald. We’re friends of Edie and Josh and Stanley, and we both knew Max when we were children.’
She hesitated and Oswald took over. ‘We heard about Max, Mrs Glover, and came to say how sorry we were.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t know him well, but I remember being jealous of him when we were children, because he was so positive and amiable. A very special person.’
‘He was, wasn’t he?’ Susan Glover gave a wistful smile. ‘Nothing daunted him; he was very confident.’ She swallowed. ‘Edie wrote to us. She was with him at the end, you know. It’s as if it was fate that she was in the hospital where he was taken. She said how lovely it was, clean sheets and blankets an’ that, and ’sound of ’sea outside ’windows, cos that was worrying me.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘That he would be comfortable at the end and not lost somewhere in all that mud that we keep hearing about.’
‘He would have been comfortable, Mrs Glover.’ Lucy strived to retain her professional demeanour. ‘I understand that Edie sat with him all night, as soon as she was told he was there. She would have cheered him up. You know Edie!’
Mrs Glover nodded. ‘That’s something we can hang on to, isn’t it?’ She began to weep. ‘Knowing that he wasn’t alone.’