Coming Home (109 page)

His son. Swiftly sketched in pencil, later washed in colour (Gus's artistic trade mark). Caught in an instant, caught forever. Edward, dressed for cricket, in white shirt and flannels, and with a brilliantly striped silk knotted at his waist. Shirtsleeves rolled up, muscled forearms, a leather cricket ball cradled in his hand. Face half-turned, suntanned and smiling, and with that stubborn lock of corn-coloured hair falling across his forehead. In a moment, he was going to put up a hand and push it aside.

Edward.

All at once, he found that he couldn't see it properly, because his vision was blurred by tears. Caught unawares, disarmed, he was weeping. He reached into his pocket and drew out a huge blue-spotted cotton handkerchief, and with it wiped the tears away, and lustily blew his nose. It was all right. It didn't matter. He was alone. No person had witnessed that moment of agonising grief.

He sat there, with the drawing of his son, for a long time. Then, carefully, replaced it in the folder, secured it once more with the paper-clips, and stowed it away in a drawer. Sometime, he would let Diana see it. Later still, he would have it framed, and set it on his desk. Later. When he found himself strong enough to sit and look at it. And live with it.

WRNS Quarters

North End

Portsmouth

Friday 23rd January.

Dear Mummy and Dad,

I haven't received a letter from you since one you wrote just after New Year, and I am so afraid you are not able to write, or perhaps it's just that something has gone wrong with the mails, or there aren't enough ships (for mail) or planes or something. Anyway, I'm going to send this to Orchard Road in the hopes that you are still there, or that somebody will forward it to you. I read the papers and listen to the news every day, and am so anxious for you all, because every day there seem to be more and more Japanese advances, the Philippines and Manila and Rangoon and Hong Kong, and then both the
Prince of Wales
and the
Repulse
being sunk, and now Kuala Lumpur has fallen. Too close to you all. What is happening? Why does nobody seem to be able to stop them? I tried to ring Uncle Bob in Scapa Flow to see if he could get any information about you all, but of course I couldn't get through. Even if I had I don't suppose I would have been able to talk to him.

So then I telephoned Loveday to find out if she had had news from Gus. (Gus Callender, who is with the Second Gordons in Singapore. Some time ago, you wrote and said you had met him at a party at the Selarig Barracks, and he'd come up and introduced himself to you. Remember?) Well, Gus and Loveday write to each other a lot, and I thought she might have had some news, but she hadn't had a letter recently either. She thought he was on some course or doing manoeuvres or something.

So no joy there either.

This morning, I went into Lieutenant Commander Crombie's office to get some letters signed (he's my boss, the Training Development Officer) and he was reading the newspaper, which I am sure he shouldn't have been doing, and he said, ‘Your family are in Singapore, aren't they?’ Rather unexpected, because he's not usually a very friendly man. I don't know how he knew, I suppose the Wren First Officer must have told him. Anyway, I told him about you all, and told him I was pretty anxious, and he said that things did look black just about everywhere at the moment (we're not doing very well anywhere, even in North Africa), but he assured me that Singapore was invincible, not simply because of its fortress position, but because it will be so heavily defended. I hope he is right, but I don't like to imagine some sort of siege. Please, Mummy, if you get the chance to be evacuated somewhere safer, do go. You can always return when the danger is over.

Now, having got that all off my chest, I shall tell you about me. It's absolutely bitterly cold, and these quarters are like a refrigerator, and there was ice on my drinking water this morning. I woke up and Portsdown Hill wasn't green, but white with snow…not very thick, and it's gone now. I'm always quite glad to get to work because at least the hut which is our office is warm. Tomorrow I've got a short weekend, and I'm going up to London for a night. (Don't worry, the worst of the raids seem to be over for the moment.) Staying at Cadogan Mews, which is still standing and hasn't been bombed. Heather Warren is coming to London, too, from her top-secret whatever-it-is. I haven't seen her since the beginning of the war, because by the time I'd moved to The Dower House, she'd started work and had left Porthkerris. We've tried to arrange a meeting two or three times, but she seems to get such odd times off, never at weekends, which is the only time
I
can manage. But, at last we've fixed it, and I'm really looking forward to seeing her again. I told you, didn't I, that Charlie Lanyon is a prisoner-of-war in Germany. Not much fun for him, but preferable to the alternative.

Anyway, I'm meeting her at the door of Swan & Edgar's, and then we're going out to lunch, and then maybe to a concert. I'd love to buy what Athena calls ‘a clothe’, but now I'm in uniform I don't get clothing coupons, and have to cadge them off Phyllis or Biddy.

Every now and then I get a letter from Nancherrow. Athena wrote, because she wanted to send me a snap of Clementina, who is now eighteen months old and beginning to walk I must say, she looks rather sweet. Athena's husband, Rupert, is now in North Africa with the Armoured Division. Not cavalry any more, but tanks. She'd had a letter from him, and he sent this joke. A British officer went off into the desert on a secret patrol, all by himself and riding a camel. After a few days, HQ got a signal saying, ‘Returning at once, Rommel Captured,’ and they all celebrated and jumped up and down. But what he had really said was, ‘Returning at once, Camel Ruptured.’

Not very funny but I thought it would make Dad laugh.

Please be in touch just as soon as you possibly can, and set my mind at rest about you all.

With lots of love,

Judith

The Wrens' Quarters, where Judith had lived for the past eighteen months, was a requisitioned block of flats in the North End of Portsmouth, flung up by some jerry-builder in the nineteen thirties. It stood at the junction of the main road and a dull suburban street, and for hideousness, discomfort, and inconvenience, would have been hard to beat. Built of red brick, and in modern style, it had a flat roof, curved corners, and horrible steel windows. No gardens or balconies softened its soulless façade, and at the back was a cement yard where once the unfortunate tenants had hung their laundry, but which the Navy had converted, with racks and shelters, into a park for the Wrens' bicycles.

Three storeys high, it contained twelve flats, all identical. Access to these was by stone stairways, and there were no lifts. The flats were very small. Sitting-room, two bedrooms, kitchen, and bathroom. There was no central heating, and there were no fireplaces and no chimneys. Only the sitting-room and the narrow hallway had electric heaters built into the wall, and even these, for reasons of fuel economy, had been put out of action. The cold, in winter, was so extreme as to be actually painful.

Ten girls occupied each flat, sleeping in double-decker naval-issue bunks. Four in the sitting-room, four in the main bedroom, and two in the second bedroom, which had clearly been designed for a very small child, or perhaps an equally small and unimportant elderly relation. Judith and a girl called Sue Ford shared this cramped apartment, which was, Judith reckoned, about the same size as the larder at The Dower House, and three times as frigid. Sue was a tall and languorous creature who came from Bath, and she was a Leading Wren in the Signal Office, which meant that she worked in watches, which was just as well because there wasn't space for two people to get dressed, or undressed, at the same time.

The Wrens' mess was in the basement, permanently blacked-out and sandbagged, as it served the double purpose of dining-hall and air-raid shelter. Breakfast was at seven, and the evening meal at seven as well, and sometimes Judith thought that if she was faced with another slice of Spam, another reconstituted scrambled egg, or another hunk of yellow cauliflower out of a piccalilli jar, she would scream.

And so, with one thing and another, it was something of a relief to be getting out, getting away, going to London, even if it was only for a single night. Bundled up in her greatcoat and carrying her overnight bag, Judith checked out at the Regulating Office, and then stepped forth into the bitter morning, intending to catch a bus that would take her to the railway station. (She could have bicycled, of course, but that would have meant leaving her bicycle at the station, and, perhaps, not finding it there when she returned. And her bicycle was such an essential part of existence that she didn't dare risk having it nicked.)

However, she didn't have to wait for a bus, because as she stood at the bus-stop, a Royal Navy truck heaved into view, the young seaman at the wheel spied her, drew up and leaned over to open the door.

‘Want a ride?’

‘Yes, I do.’ And she clambered aboard and slammed the door shut behind her.

‘Where to?’

‘The station. Thanks,’ she added.

‘On leave, are you?’ He drew out into the road again, with a tooth-clenching clash of gears.

‘Short weekend.’

‘Where are you off to?’

‘London.’

‘Lucky girl, going up the Smoke. Come from 'ackney, myself. Least, I used to. My mum was bombed out in the blitz. Living with 'er cousin now, in Balham. Bloody cold, i'n't it? Want a fag?’

‘Don't smoke, thanks.’

‘When's your train?’

‘Meant to be ten-fifteen.’

‘
If
it goes on time.’

It didn't. It was late, but that wasn't surprising. Late drawing into the platform, and late in leaving. She stood about for a bit, stamping her feet to try to keep her circulation going, and then, when at last the passengers were allowed to board, got defiantly into a first-class compartment. Her travel warrant was for third class, but a draft of young seamen, fully kitted out, were also travelling to London, and she didn't feel strong enough to fight her way along the crowded corridors in search of a seat only to end up sitting on a kitbag wedged in a corner by one of the smelly lavatories. If the ticket collector came around between Portsmouth and Waterloo — which, quite often he didn't — she would simply pay the few shillings extra and stay where she was.