‘So you’ve nothing left now, Vi? Your home – you said it was bombed.’
‘That’s right. Nothing left now, but dreams. Ar hey, lovely, it was. Me an’ Gerry’d build up the kitchen fire and we’d sit there and talk about what we’d do if we won the Irish Sweepstake. “First thing we buy is an ’ouse for you, girl, near your Mary’s,” Gerry’d say, “with a garden and a bathroom.” He wanted a bathroom real bad. Well, dreams are cheap, aren’t they? Like promises. Gerry promised he’d take care, promised to come back to me, but …’
‘Rob promised, too, always to love me,’ Jane whispered. ‘And I’ll always love him. I’ll never forget him. Never.’
‘Oh, dear, I feel quite full up.’ Lucinda felt guilty. Nothing half so terrible had happened to her; no one she loved had been killed or even hurt. Indeed, had it not been for the blazing row with Mama she would still be living with her parents, seeing Charlie twice a week and helping the wounded airmen get back their confidence. And she would still be listening to Mama’s complaining and thinking up excuses for not having the wedding just yet, which hadn’t been fair of her, really, because she did want to marry Charlie. Later, though. She and Charlie had made no promises. He had always been there, like a brother, their relationship easy. He hadn’t proposed to her, either, not actually asked her to marry him. Like everyone else, he had assumed she would. Even Nanny took it for granted. ‘Once you and Captain Charles are married I shall look after your babies, Lucinda, as I looked after you.’ Babies and Charlie. The two seemed inseparable. She and Charlie weren’t in love, not really in love. Their relationship was civilized and uncomplicated, and she wished it could have been that way too for Vi and Jane. ‘Shall we go again to Lilith’s?’ she ventured.
‘Yes!’ Jane’s reply was instant. ‘Oh, I know it’s wrong to believe in such things, but Lilith couldn’t have known about seven, could she?’
‘Is it a special number?’
‘I suppose it is. Seven was the time we used to meet. My mother didn’t like my seeing Rob, so it wasn’t easy for him to get in touch with me. He never knew when he’d be flying, you see, so I’d wait for him every night at seven and hope he’d be there.’
‘Did you know him long, queen?’
‘Not really, though I felt I’d always known him. Thirteen weeks and four days, that was all. Then he went missing.’
‘Three months. It isn’t a lot,’ Vi sympathized. ‘I was luckier than you. Me and Gerry had four years. But missing isn’t – well, there’s a chance for your Rob, isn’t there? One day there’ll be a letter tellin’ you he’s all right, just you see if there isn’t.’
‘There won’t, Vi. I’m not his next of kin. The Air Force will write to his mother if there’s anything to tell, and the awful part of it is that I don’t know where she lives. Somehow, Rob didn’t get around to telling me where. He meant to, but addresses didn’t seem important – well, not until it was too late. All I know is that he lived in Glasgow. Funny, isn’t it, loving someone the way I loved Rob yet knowing so little about him.’
‘No clues? Did he mention where he went to school?’ Lucinda jammed a second slice of bread.
‘No. Only that he got a scholarship to the local academy. And I know he worked in insurance, but there must be hundreds of insurance offices, and dozens of schools.’
‘And he never mentioned the street he lived in – even casually?’
‘Never, though he did say his local picture house was the Pavilion and I know his mother took her loaves to be baked at a place called Jimmy McFadden’s bakery, but they’re not in the phone book, either of them. I’ve looked.’
‘Then you’ll have to be patient, won’t you; wait till he gets in touch with you. And one day there’ll be a letter, I’ll bet you anything you like there will.’
‘Or a message,’ Jane said softly, ‘like tonight. We will go to Lilith’s again, Vi. You won’t try to persuade me not to?’
‘No, queen, I’ll not do that. But it won’t be tomorrow nor Friday because I’m on late duty those nights. But we’ll go, all of us, just as soon as we can make it.’
And get to the bottom of that Lilith woman and her tricks – if tricks they were …
Monday evening, warm and bright. Eight days since the invasion of Russia, with the German divisions thrusting far and deep, said the announcer who read the six o’clock news, trapping thousands of Soviets west of Minsk.
It was terrible to imagine, Jane brooded, what might have happened had Hitler chosen to invade the British Isles instead of the Soviet Union. What had influenced that choice? Fate, had it been, or the flippant tossing of a coin? Or was it something more deep and sinister? Hitler believed in the occult, it was said; could the stars, then, have been responsible for so tremendous a decision? Was it possible for a man who had goose-stepped his hordes over half the world, almost, to be so naïve?
And when he was done with Russia, what then? Would London be his next prize or would he rest content with all he had taken and let the war settle into an uneasy stalemate?
But this must stop! It was unpatriotic even to think such things. Hitler would never take London. For the time being, the possibility of invasion had lessened. The German war machine was wholly occupied with the total subjugation of Russia, giving the shattered British Army time to heal its Dunkirk wounds and start thirsting for revenge. We would win. Alone and battered as we were, of course we would. Somehow, we always did. But how long, she mourned, would it take and how many shining young lives would be snuffed out before the price was finally settled?
‘What’s to do, queen? Lost a shillin’ and found a meg?’
‘No, Vi. I was thinking about – about going to Lilith’s. We will go,’ she said as they got up from the supper table. ‘You said you would,’ she urged, when doubt showed at once on Vi’s face. ‘You did, Vi, and it’s only fun, isn’t it?’
‘Well, just as long as that’s all it is.’ Vi hesitated. Only yesterday she had attended Confession and Mass in Craigiebur and was reluctant to blot her clean copybook so soon after. ‘As long as we’re all agreed it’s only for laughs.’ She was wavering. She wanted to talk to Lilith again. She would have dismissed that message without another thought had it not been for one word. Girl. No one could have known about that. ‘What about you, Lucinda?’
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to count me out.’ Lucinda’s cheeks flushed crimson. ‘I’ve – er – got something on tonight. And before anybody says anything, I couldn’t get out of it.’
‘Nothin’ to do with us.’ Vi’s face showed very plainly that even though she didn’t wear a ring, a girl who was engaged and who might well be getting married on her next leave should not have anything on, so to speak.
‘Well, I’m telling you, Vi, so you can stop looking like Nanny. It’s Molly’s date, really – Molly from the teleprinter room – but she’s in sick bay so I said I’d sort it out for her.’
‘I see.’
‘No you don’t.’ Vi even sounded like Nanny, Lucinda thought. ‘Molly had a vaccination and she looked awful. Her arm was red and swollen and she was obviously running a temperature. So the signal bosun said she’d better see the MO and he asked Lofty to listen out for me so I could go with her.’
That much made sense, Jane agreed. Another peculiar naval custom. Wren ratings shall not attend the ship’s doctor