The Bannister Girls (19 page)

Snuffling into her lace handkerchief, Louise couldn't shake off the image of Stanley being blown to bits. But it was not in the least as the embarrassed officers imagined.

She was seeing Stanley's arms and legs flying off in four directions. His head shooting upwards, the eyes still slightly surprised and affronted at what was happening, the fleshy
mouth hanging open in that stupid vacant way of his. And then there was that other bit in the middle. That ridiculous, flaccid appendage that rarely stood up straight like a little soldier the way it was supposed to, and was probably filling up with pee as it wobbled about, showering everybody around him … Louise, who hardly ever let such coarseness enter her mind, let alone pass her lips, was suddenly giggling wildly at the thought of dear departed Stanley's penis suddenly having a life of its own and peeing over everything in sight.

‘Whatever's happening?' At that moment, Clemence came in from her evening at the railway station, followed by an open-mouthed Angel. The sight of Louise, dear, correct Louise, in the throes of high-pitched laughter and apparently being embraced by a stranger while another looked on, was nothing short of – of scandalous!

‘I'm so sorry, Lady Bannister,' one of the officers began, when Louise suddenly shrieked at her, tearing herself from the other's arms.

‘It's Stanley, Mother. He's got himself blown up. He'll be a hero after all, even if it's only a dead one! Doesn't that please you,
Mother
?'

She sounded so much like Ellen as she hurled out the news. Clemence's face lost all its colour. Louise rushed out of the room, and Angel rushed out after her. The officers looked gravely at Clemence.

‘It's shock, I'm afraid. It affects people in different ways. It may take a few hours for her to calm down and accept the truth. If I may suggest it, I would send for a doctor right way, Lady Bannister.'

‘Yes. Yes, of course. But please tell me quickly if what my daughter says is true. Is poor dear Stanley really dead?'

The officers managed not to look at one another while they related the facts. Clemence was still listening in horror while her hand reached for the telephone to call the doctor for Louise. In the midst of her shock and sincere grief, she
was already planning a splendid funeral. It would be the last thing they could do for Stanley.

No one knew of Sir Fred Bannister's involvement with the widow of one of his millworkers. While he was in Yorkshire he spent some nights in his hotel and the rest at Harriet's cottage. Only the hotel manager had Harriet's telephone number in case of emergencies, and all he knew was that it was a contact number. Better to be safe than sorry, even though he would dearly love to spend all his time with Harriet. All his days and all his nights. To sink himself in her soft warmth and never come out … he said as much to her one cold night in February, when they were snuggled up together in her creaking old bed, and had just spent a glorious hour in the pursuit of happiness.

‘I'm always amazed how good it is with you,' Fred marvelled. ‘Clemence was always such a cold fish. She used to gaze at the ceiling so much, I swear she could tell you how many flakes of paint there were on it.'

Harriet giggled, nestling more comfortably into his rotund stomach, her hand flat against his buttocks.

‘You're a wicked old man, Fred, and I love you for it!'

‘I love you too, my Harriet. You keep me sane. But not so much of the old! There's plenty of life in me yet.'

‘Don't I know it.' She smiled in the darkness as he pushed against her, reminding her of his virility. Women such as Clemence Bannister were fools if they didn't appreciate a man like Fred. She felt no compunction, no guilt, in sharing him. If Clemence didn't want this lovely man and she did, then so be it. Harriet's cheerful, simple philosophy ended right there.

The thin sound of a bell ringing somewhere in the house made Fred swear lustily with words Clemence wasn't remotely aware that he knew, and wouldn't recognise if she heard them.

‘Hell and damnation. Just as I was beginning to feel
broody again. Who can be calling you on the telephone at this time of night?'

‘I'd better answer, love.' Harriet slid out of bed, her ample curves rolling slightly. Fred didn't mind her plumpness. It was fantastic to dig his hands into so much flesh and feel it wrap around you. He had never felt so welcome anywhere in the world as he felt with Harriet. She slipped the warm dressing gown over her nakedness, pushed her feet into her old slippers and padded down the stairs. Fred stretched luxuriously, grinning as the bedsprings creaked again. He liked their creaking. When he and Harriet began cavorting, they sang a joyous song of reunion every bloody time…

He heard her run back up the stairs. She was surprisingly light for a heavy woman. She'd be cold now. He threw back the bedclothes for her to come back to him…

‘Fred, it's the hotel for you. There's been an accident. Somebody's been hurt. You'd best speak to him, love –'

He was already out of bed.

‘Not Angel. Please God, not Angel –'

He hardly knew he'd muttered the words as he ran downstairs, heedless of the cold Yorkshire night and his lack of clothes. He had the bedspread held tightly around him like a Roman toga. Harriet smiled slightly in spite of the anxiety she felt. Naturally, Fred's first thoughts would be for his Angel, his best-loved daughter. If Harriet had been the jealous sort, she would be jealous of Angel.

It was a while before he came back upstairs. Silently, she handed him his clothes, knowing he must leave her, because this was the price they had to pay.

‘It's my son-in-law. My stupid, pea-brained son-in-law. Blown to bits inspecting a site for a munitions factory. No one but Stanley could come to such an incongruous end. I've telephoned Clemence, and I have to get home. Louise is acting very strangely. They need me, Harriet. I'll leave some money for the phone call –'

‘Don't you dare. Just come back as soon as you can. I'll be
here, Freddie,' she said, her voice threatening to break, because what troubled him, troubled her. She hugged him swiftly, not allowing the sentiment to show.

‘You know I'll always be here.'

Black didn't suit the older Bannister girls. It drained Louise, and made Ellen look harder and squarer. By contrast, Angel looked stunning, her long fair hair swathed into a discreet knot beneath the veiled black hat for the solemn occasion of Stanley's funeral. Clemence too, her smart black costume softened with pearls, looked elegant and queenly. Sir Fred fidgeted awkwardly in the front pew of the village church where Louise had insisted Stanley be buried rather than anonymously in London.

Fred wished himself miles away. He wished he didn't have this bloody guilt feeling over where he'd been when the telephone message had come through to him. He wished he didn't have to tramp over the frosty, slippery Somerset earth behind the coffin draped with the Union flag, flanked by the small group of military dignitaries who had arrived that morning.

Fred was feeling more of a hypocrite than ever before, because he had always despised Stanley, and now he felt obliged to grip his daughter's trembling arm and mutter platitudes at her snuffling tears.

‘It's sensible to plant him here,' Ellen had breathed to Angel when the coffin had been lowered, and they had all walked dutifully around the hole to peer down into it. ‘He's just as likely to be blown up all over again in a London churchyard, and there'd be hardly anything left of him next time. It's only bits and pieces now –'

‘Ellen, for heaven's sake!' Angel said, scandalised at the brittleness in her sister's voice. ‘Have some compassion for Louise! I don't know what's got into you lately.'

‘Louise doesn't need compassion from us. She's getting all she needs from Haggis Dougal,' Ellen muttered.

Angel refused to speak to her after that. Ellen was becoming impossible. Everyone was in a heightened state of nerves, but Ellen was just about the end.

What neither Angel nor anyone else knew, was that Ellen was being bombarded by attentions from Andrew Pender, the Cornishman, who knew a good thing when he saw one, and sized up Ellen Bannister immediately. A fine beauty, just ripe for the plucking, and untouched by human hand, if he was any judge. And he considered himself an expert when it came to women.

It was fortuitous after all, that his Conchie protestations had brought him away from his home county, where things had been getting a little sticky with all this patriotism nonsense, and even more so in his personal life. Being sent off to do his duty on this sleepy little Somerset farm had sounded a bore, but Ellen Bannister was going to change all that. Andrew had every confidence in it.

There was now the question of what to do with Louise after Stanley had been disposed of, as Fred put it to himself baldly. Of course, she would stay at Meadowcroft as long as she wished, but once they all went back to London after the war…

Louise and Stanley had had their own home, and presumably she would want to live there on her own. Or she may not. She may well prefer to come back to the fold, and remain a war widow for the rest of her natural. A prospect that made Fred go cold, picturing the future with Louise and Clemence constantly together…

Stanley had been dead for two weeks when Louise startled them all by announcing that she had to get right away for a
while. By then, Fred had returned to Yorkshire, and Clemence put down the socks she was packing in tissue paper for the troops, and looked at her eldest daughter in amazement. Louise's cheeks were quite pink, as though she had been steeling herself for this moment, as indeed she had.

‘Mother, I know you may think it odd, but I can't bear everyone looking at me with such sympathy. You're all being very kind, but I simply can't cope with it all. And when I go to the village, it's ten times worse. People either stare or look away in embarrassment, but I know they're talking about me all the same. I don't want to feel an object of pity, Mother. Please understand.'

‘Of course I do, darling.' Clemence's heart went out to her, standing tall and slender in her unflattering black, and sensing how her pride would be affected by village folks' stares. One had one's dignity to consider, after all. ‘But in a few weeks from now, people will have other things to think about. They're naturally sad for you, Louise –'

‘I don't want them feeling sad for me!' Louise's hands were clenched tight at her sides, her well-shaped nails digging into her palms. ‘You know that Dougal is leaving here next week, don't you? He's asked if I would care to visit his family in Scotland for a few weeks as a sort of recuperation. It's all perfectly proper, Mother –'

‘Are you out of your mind, Louise?' The socks and tissue paper slid to the floor with a little rustling noise as Clemence rose from her chair to face her daughter. ‘Of course you can't go off to Scotland in the company of a young man! Whatever are you thinking of?'

‘I'm thinking of recovering from the shock of losing my husband,' Louise said deliberately and with great solemnity. ‘I'm thinking of accepting a friend's kind offer to stay with his family, not to set myself up as his paramour, and you insult me by suggesting otherwise. I was not asking for
your permission, Mother. I was informing you of my intentions.'

Clemence's mouth dropped open at the sudden edge in Louise's voice. This was not the rather colourless daughter who had complied so dutifully when Clemence had found a suitable husband for her. This was a defiant young woman, more in the mould of her strong-willed sisters than the Louise who had been such a perfect echo of herself.

Before she could speak, Louise had rushed over to her and put her arms around her. Her voice was muffled against Clemence's shoulder.

‘I'm sorry, Mummy. But I'm not your little girl any longer. I'm a married woman who has to learn to be alone from now on, and to make her own decisions. Dougal will telephone his parents in Edinburgh and ask them to speak to you. But that is as much as I will compromise.'

‘Compromise! It seems a very apt choice of word, Louise.' Clemence twisted it bitterly to suit the waves of shock running through her. ‘Can you not see how it will look to be running off with this – this man, so soon after dear Stanley's death?'

Louise moved away from her mother. Her eyes were sorrowful but filled with a determination Clemence couldn't miss.

‘Sometimes I think you don't know me at all, Mother. You're just not listening to me. I've done nothing to be ashamed of, and nor do I intend to. I have to get away, and this is my salvation.'

Angel had come into the room at the tail end of the conversation, and quickly got the gist of it. Clemence immediately appealed to her, futilely hoping for some support from Angel as to the wickedness of it all.

‘I could drive you and Dougal, if you like,' Angel offered instead. ‘It will give me some long-distance driving practice. I can be your chaperon, if Mummy thinks you need one.'

Clemence threw up her hands.

‘I might have expected something like this. Has my entire family taken leave of their senses?'

Angel felt briefly sorry for her. The world was changing so fast, and despite her good intentions, in some respects Clemence was totally unable to keep up with it.

‘Wouldn't you rather I drove them to Scotland than let Louise travel alone with Dougal, Mother?' She hoped the Sunbeam would be up to such a journey, they would obviously need to do it in easy stages, if Louise were to accept the offer.

‘Thank-you, darling.' Louise hugged Angel in a rare rush of affection. ‘I accept your offer unreservedly. I'll ask Dougal to put through the call to his parents this evening. You'll be here, won't you, Mother?'

Wild horses wouldn't have dragged Clemence out of doors in the circumstances, but she merely pursed her lips and nodded silently. It must be some kind of post-bereavement shock, she decided. Dear Louise would never normally act so irresponsibly. And perhaps it wasn't so awful, after all. Perhaps when she saw the fellow in his own home, with his family, she would realise just how marked was the difference between them, and be more than thankful to come home. There couldn't be any real attachment between Louise and Dougal Mackie. Clemence simply closed her mind to such an absurd possibility.