The Bannister Girls (10 page)

What she had seen in Rose today was the way she would react should anything happen to Jacques. This same desolation, this anguish … was Rose's pain any deeper for having known her Ronnie a lifetime instead of for just one magical night?

Angel knew in her heart that the two couldn't compare, but how could one measure one person's pain against another's? She had rarely bothered to think so deeply about anything before, and that thought was followed swiftly by the sweeping panic that if anything did happen to Jacques, she would probably never know.

‘Angel, let's eat this bloody food and get on our way,' she heard Ellen's tetchy voice right behind her, and the fact that her sister was swearing, in the modern way she did at times of stress, told its own story.

They went back to the car, where Rose looked more composed now, and Hobbs lounged against the side of the car to eat his lunch. He was a curious mixture, Angel thought. She supposed he was what they called the salt of the earth, which was why Rose found him comfortable to be with.

‘What service are you going to enlist in, Hobbs?' Angel asked, for want of something to say.

‘Army, Miss. They need men in the trenches, and I'm not afraid to stick a bayonet up Jerry's backside,' he reverted quickly to his usual form, but seeing the little smile at the
sides of Rose's mouth, the Bannister girls didn't attempt to reprimand him.

‘I'll pray for you, Hobbs,' Rose said quietly. ‘I'll add you to my list, next to Ronnie.'

‘Thanks, Ma'am,' he said gravely. Neither of them noticed the incongruity of the words. The other two looked at each other and glanced away again, as if each had just discovered the meaning of mortality. And Angel felt as though the ground beneath her feet had suddenly turned to shifting sand.

By the time they had been at Meadowcroft for two months and resigned themselves to Fred's ultimatum that they must stay there for the duration, they began to feel as though they had never lived anywhere else. The news from the Front was so bad that none of the girls even wanted to be in London now, where the thick of the air raids was concentrated, and posters and newspaper cartoons depicting the police parading with placards telling everyone to take cover when danger threatened, only added to the feeling of alarm. Anyway, Clemence too was adamant in not going back until it was all over, and just hoped that their dear Hampstead house would be spared.

Meadowcroft was like another world, and Clemence busied herself at once in gathering up a new knitting circle among the countrywomen, and enlisting poor Rose to help, even if Ellen and Angel grumbled about it so annoyingly.

During April, the newspapers had reported the dreadful new German secret weapon, poison gas. As it had drifted towards the French and British lines at Ypres in a bluish white mist, the area became horrifyingly thick with dead and dying soldiers.

There were no gas masks available, and once the gas had been dispersed, even the Germans were unable to advance and attack for risk of being caught in their own trap. If they, like the Allies, slipped into a shell hole where the gas had
accumulated, they could as easily be killed by their own poisonous fumes.

‘Bloody madmen!' Fred blasphemed loudly, uncaring for his wife's disapproving face. ‘The Boche are creating nothing but a stupid stalemate that neither side can win!'

As if to confirm his words, weeks of fruitless fighting followed, with only the casualty lists growing longer, and then the French and British resorted to using gas themselves.

‘I simply fail to credit this.' Fred scanned the latest reports in disbelief. ‘Since there wasn't enough wind to blow it into the German lines, many of our men were killed by their own gas, to add to the appalling number of fatalities.'

Those who continued to exist in the daily mire could hardly be better off than those who died, according to the more hard-hitting news reports. The conditions of the trenches were said to be filthy and lice-ridden, the trenches awash with mud and effluent. The winter had been especially cold and wet, the spring a long time coming in the Allied lines.

‘It grows more terrifying every day.' Clemence threw down the newspaper she was reading, as if the very touch of it tainted her. ‘Why doesn't the government do something? What are the other friendly nations doing about it?'

The answer came in May, when Italy entered the war, to set up their own meagre line of defence on the French/Italian border against the Germans. In England at the same time, Lloyd George organised a Ministry of Munitions.

Munitions workers were to be better paid and exempt from call-up if conscription became necessary, as seemed increasingly likely, and a little daylight was thought to be seen in the haphazard running of the country's affairs.

‘At the rate soldiers are being killed at the Front, they'll be sending old men soon,' Ellen muttered. ‘I wish I was a man. I'd follow in Hobbs' footsteps!'

‘I'm very thankful that you're not,' Clemence said sharply. ‘You'd go and get yourself killed at the very first
opportunity, thinking you could win the war single-handed!'

‘Thank-you, Mother! I shall take that as a compliment, however you meant it.' Ellen grinned. ‘Hide that newspaper before Rose and Angel come back from the village. Rose takes a morbid interest in reading the casualty columns since Hobbs enlisted. She prays for him every night. Did you know?'

‘Gracious me!' Clemence stared at her daughter. ‘You mean that your friend Rose prays for the chauffeur?'

Her affrontery was almost comical. Ellen would dearly have loved to encourage it, but then her mother would probably take Rose gently aside, and tell her that such an association just wasn't suitable, and Ellen couldn't risk the thought of her friend being so embarrassed.

‘There's nothing of
l'amour
about it, Mama,' she said airily. ‘Rose has merely added Hobbs to her list of prayers for dead and prospectively dead heroes. Ronnie first, Hobbs second, that's all. Quaint, isn't it?'

‘Really, Ellen, you can be very objectionable at times,' Clemence went hot at such outrageous talk.

‘Why? Because I'm not afraid to talk of death? Isn't it time it stopped being such a forbidden subject, Mother, when all about us are dropping like flies?'

Clemence rose stiffly to her feet.

‘I won't stay in the same room with you while you're behaving like this, Ellen. You shame me with your so-called clever talk. Accompany me and my ladies to the railway station at Temple Meads one afternoon to give the poor wounded boys tea and comfort, and see some of them who come home from the Front with limbs missing and eyes blinded, and then see how glibly you dare to talk of death.'

She swept out of the room, and Ellen bit her lip. God knew why she had to take things out on her mother, who was definitely doing her bit, despite her own refined upbringing, but Ellen felt so abominably frustrated down here. She and Rose were out of sorts with one another, and even their
interest in women's rights had inevitably waned, since Mrs Pankhurst had patriotically stopped her rigid campaigning while the war lasted. But without the shared interest, both Ellen and Rose realised uneasily that they had absolutely nothing in common.

Buried in the country and with all such activities curtailed, there were no great rallies, no heroic speeches to listen to, no sacrifices to be made. It was all so deadly dull. The others didn't seem to find it so stifling as Ellen did, she thought irritably.

Louise had become involved in some sort of charity work in nearby Bristol, and drove herself in and out of the city with a determined nearer-to-God expression every afternoon.

Angel had wheedled their father into teaching her to drive, and was crashing about in the Sunbeam all over the place. Either with their mother, who held on to the seat as if it was going to be her last excursion on earth, or taking the willing Rose to explore the country which she had never seen before. Ellen felt very much adrift.

The only way she could rid herself of the annoyance she constantly felt was to bait her mother, which was a frustration in itself, because she always felt so God-damned awful about it afterwards.

She heard the screech of tyres outside. Angel was far from being a proficient driver, but according to their father she would get there in the end. Ellen hadn't even sat beside her sister in the car yet to find out. Seconds later Rose and Angel came rushing into the room, obviously brimful of news. Ellen lifted a bored eyebrow.

‘All right, what's going on now? Let me guess. We're to be billetted with soldiers. I said it would happen. Why would they allow us to get away with it, when smaller houses than ours have to have their quota –?'

She stopped her laconic surmising as she saw the excited look on Rose's face. It was a while since she had seen her
look so animated, even if it probably wouldn't last very long. Ellen sat upright from her sprawling position on the sofa.

‘What's happened? Tell me at once!'

Angel's voice shook as she answered. ‘Oh, Ellen, do you remember that nice Mr Strube with the greengrocer's shop in the village? We always called him Mr Roly-Poly German Sausage when we were small, and Mother said we weren't to be so rude –'

‘What about him?'

‘Well, you know all the fuss there's been lately about Germans living in Britain when we're at war with them. Last night Mr Strube's shop was broken into, and everything was smashed up, and the vegetables were thrown into the street. It wasn't discovered until morning, though I can't think how people could have missed hearing the noise. Early this morning, when the postman was doing his rounds, he saw the mess and sent for the police, and they found poor Mr Strube.'

‘What do you mean, they
found
him?' Ellen was struck by the little break in Angel's voice, and by the curious fact that Rose seemed to be enjoying herself hugely.

‘He's dead, Ellen!' Angel said in a hushed voice. ‘He was beaten to death by the thugs who broke into his shop. Who would want to do that to such a nice harmless old man?'

Rose stopped smiling as Ellen opened her mouth in astonishment at this news. And before Ellen could reply, Rose was suddenly screeching.

‘I'll tell you who could do it! All those who believe in justice, and want to be rid of every rotten German who's lived off our country for years. One of them killed my Ronnie, and I'm
glad
that your Mr Roly-Poly Sausage-man is dead, do you hear? I wish I'd been there to help them finish him off—'

She stopped abruptly, her voice ending in a strangled scream as Ellen leapt up and struck her hard across the side of her cheek. The blow was so spontaneous that Rose lost her
balance and fell to the ground, while Angel looked on in horror.

Rose had given no sign of this reaction in the car, but Angel should have known. She should have guessed … apart from that one outburst on the way here, Rose had been too calm for too long. She had to crack sometime…

Clemence walked quickly into the room, shocked to see what appeared to be an undignified scuffle between two women as Ellen dragged a sobbing Rose to her feet.

‘Leave me alone,' Rose blazed at her. ‘You don't understand. You can't possibly understand. You're turning into a shrivelled up old maid, Ellen, and if you'd ever been capable of loving a man as I loved my Ronnie, you'd hate all Germans, however sweet and bouncy a shopkeeper might be. They're our
enemies
. Can't you see that?'

‘Rose is quite right,' Clemence said crisply. ‘It's all over the newspapers. Any one of them could be a spy, and none of us will feel safe in our beds while there are Germans living and working among us. For their own safety as well as ours, the government will have to detain them until the end of the war. They should have used their own common sense and got out as soon as war was declared. The Germans lost no time in ridding their own country of undesirable aliens!'

Angel stared at her mother, and for once, she and Ellen were totally of the same mind.

‘Mother, you can't be serious!
Prison
? There are dozens of Germans, waiters and barbers and shopkeepers who have lived here for years and years. This is their home. Why
should
they run away like cowards?'

‘Because it's not their country, and while Germany is at war with Britain, the government will have no choice but to put them away for the duration, Angel.'

‘I never heard of anything so idiotic,' Ellen raged. ‘You obviously don't know that Mr Roly-Poly Strube was beaten to a pulp last night until he was dead. What justification is there in that,
Mother
?'

Clemence went white with shock, but she was too angry with Ellen to comment on the cruel murder at that moment.

‘Perhaps it will help to prove to you that all this independent women's movement nonsense will get you nowhere. The government decides what's best in the end, and it's as perfectly clear that these foreigners must be put safely away,' Clemence said coldly, using the moment to chip away at Ellen's beliefs.

As Ellen threw up her hands in despair, she turned to Rose, putting a kindly arm around her shoulders.

‘Let's go and find some witch-hazel for your poor face, dear, to prevent it bruising too badly.'

‘Thank-you, Mrs Bannister,' Rose sniffled. ‘But in the circumstances, I don't think I can stay here any longer. I shall go back to London, or into lodgings –'

‘We'll think about all that tomorrow when you're rested,' Clemence said soothingly. ‘London's not the safest place for you, but I know someone who's looking for a companion housekeeper, and the position might just suit you, Rose dear, with your experience in housewifery.'

Their voices faded away as the two of them went out of the room, and while Angel wanted to die with embarrassment at her mother's implication that Rose's future status could be little more than a servant, Ellen exploded with anger.