The Bannister Girls (25 page)

Margot laughed. ‘Well, I might manage the odd social event or two. What will you do, darling? Home to Meadowcroft? Unless you'd prefer to stay in Norfolk with us. Not so
much travelling and all that,' she added delicately.

‘No, I shall go home,' Angel said evenly. ‘Mother would be hurt if I didn't.'

‘So would your father. Don't shut him out, Angel.'

Just recently, she had been able to shut him out most effectively. Life had been too busy to spend time on sentiment. Days were filled to capacity, nights spent in exhausted sleep. It was what she had needed. It delayed thinking and making decisions. Now the thinking had been done for her, and she was going home.

And despite the embarrassment she would feel at facing her father again, England and Meadowcroft and all the lovely memories of home tugged at her heart.

There was no point now in writing a hurried note to tell Jacques she was in France, when she was about to depart. It must all wait until she returned in a week's time.

There was another thought to cling to. If there was to be a splendid battle in July as was surmised, and victory followed, then she and Jacques and countless others could pick up the threads of their lives again.

She must think positively, buoyantly. She must see this new task of safeguarding the stretcher cases back to England as a challenge and an omen. If they all got home safely, then it boded well for the future.

The journey was a nightmare. The ambulance jolted over the rough roads, and time and again the girls asked her to stop while the stretcher cases leaned out of the vehicle and vomited on the roadside, or emptied their bowels into containers that had to be disposed of unless they wanted it spilling over everything. The stench was indescribable, but they had to grit their teeth and bear it.

Time and again, Angel dashed the tears from her eyes, knowing she mustn't weaken at the moans and retchings, because she must get them to the coast on time. They couldn't afford long delays, not even for the men's comfort,
or to let the air in the ambulance freshen.

She mustn't even think of them as men – or boys, which most of them were. They were the stretcher cases. Only by continuing to think of them so impersonally could she cope with the human degradation, guiltily thanking God that at least she was driving and not constantly tending them, like the others.

When they finally arrived at the port, she got out of the ambulance with shaking legs, feeling worse than she had ever felt in her life when her charges thanked her cheerfully for getting them safely to the ship. Poor devils … one with only one leg, one with chest wounds that kept him coughing up blood, two with shell shock and internal bleeding, and the other two looking so near to death that Angel wondered at the sense of bringing them all this way to suffer more.

She was instantly ashamed. If they were to die, how much better to die at home in England with a loving family all around, than in some anonymous foreign military hospital.

Other hands took care of the soldiers on board ship, but they were still officially responsible for them until they reached British soil. Angel handed them over with a great wave of thankfulness, knowing uneasily that this might well be only the first of many such sojourns. How blithely she had once said that she could drive ambulances in France, with no idea of what it entailed. How values changed…

At Dover, she and Margot parted from Green and Martin and took the train to London. They spent the night at the station hotel, and in the morning they hugged and parted, Margot to go on to Norfolk, Angel to wait impatiently on the crowded station for a train on the Great Western line to Bristol, and then a taxi to Meadowcroft.

Not until then did the strain of the previous day begin to recede. Everything had happened so fast, she couldn't let anyone know she was coming, and it was better so. She wanted no fuss, no talk of heroics. She just wanted to be home.

Weak tears filled her eyes. She was no heroine, home from the Front. Those wounded boys were the heroes, every one. A sudden overpowering dread of going back overcame her. She wanted to crawl away into hiding, and never have to face those wards again, the smells, the terrors, the screams…

But she knew in her heart that of course she would go back. What right did she have to refuse help to those who needed her? They too would want to see these patchwork English fields in their soft green summer mantle. With faint surprise, Angel saw how the seasons had moved on.

‘Angel, my dear girl! Why on earth didn't you let us know you were coming? Just look at you! So thin and dishevelled. You need fattening up before you tell us all about it. Your things are still in your room, and you do look so stained after travelling, darling. I'm sure you'll feel better after a bath.'

Clemence's stunned surprise in seeing her daughter gave way to practicalities.

Angel stood perfectly still for a moment, drinking in the warmth and the luxury of the lovely old house. In effect, it reached out its arms to welcome her home, which was more than Clemence had done. There had been a brief hug and a peck on the cheek, but maternal concern for Angel to resume her role as young lady of the house quickly took precedence over everything else.

She wondered how this woman, so attentive at the hospital trains, could be so incapable of showing love to her own family. But of course, the dear boys at the railway station didn't have to be shown real touching and holding affection, did they? Their outward needs were attended to, and in that, Clemence admirably played the part of their ministering angel. It was a minor revelation in those first bittersweet moments of coming home.

She heard the bang of a door, and then her father came into the room, crossing the space between them and holding her tight to his chest, all else forgotten.

‘Thank God you're safe, my dearest girl. I thought I was imagining things when I heard your voice. Sit down and let me look at you!'

Fred drew her onto the sofa, still holding tightly to her hands, his eyes searching her weary face. He could only guess at all she had experienced. He wanted to protect her from all ills, his darling child, hardly aware that she sat momentarily stiff, distant from him.

Angel couldn't help registering the difference in him and Clemence. The one so warm and loving, the other so aloof. Without analysing them further, she suddenly leaned her weight against her father's chest, and let his arms hold her as they had done so many times in the past. It may not be total forgiveness, but it was a beginning.

But Clemence was right. When she had had a hot bath and washed her hair, and changed into a light summer frock, dallying in her old room with her own belongings, she began to feel human again. She was almost loath to go downstairs to have to talk about the war. Here she felt safe. Home and all the things she had so ached to get away from were now the things she most needed.

Sister Yard had been right too, insisting that the girls take their leave. Angel acknowledged that there was a limit to a person's endurance. The independence she had coveted so much was forgotten for the moment. It was good to feel pampered and part of something deep and abiding once more. Meadowcroft was truly the haven Fred had always called it.

Downstairs, the soldiers billetted at the house were impatient for news of the Front. The convalescents had varying reactions to her guarded reports. She didn't want to talk of it, or think of it. Fred was sensitive to her feelings, and decided when enough was enough. He suggested that the two of them should stroll down to the village after dinner.

‘Get your land legs back to normal again, old thing. What do you say?'

Angel agreed slowly. They had to talk. She knew that. Might as well get it over with, as let it fester. She had heard those same cheerful words from so many lips of brave boys preparing to have limbs amputated … it was as if the ghost of them would be forever in her head and heart.

‘Have you heard from Ellen lately?' she said quickly.

Clemence's eyes were steely. ‘I've washed my hands of her. She and that dreadful Rose Morton now work in a munitions factory of all things! You'd think that dear Stanley's accident would have put Ellen off such an idea for life.'

‘I thought Rose had become your favourite, Mother,' Angel said mildly.

‘Never!' Clemence could dismiss facts from her mind like other people changed their stockings. ‘I blame her for much of Ellen's waywardness.'

‘Ellen's not afraid to exercise her own mind, Mother. What of Louise? I thought she might have been home by now.' Or sent word that she and the dashing Dougal Mackie had eloped to Gretna Green in romantic fashion…

‘Louise is spending the summer fruit picking in Scotland.' Clemence's voice implied that it was only slightly better than soliciting on street corners. ‘She'll ruin her hands and her skin, but since she's an independent woman, as she frequently tells me in her letters, she does as she pleases.'

‘Good for her,' Angel said softly. She felt a brief pity for her mother, all three of her ewe-lambs turning out to be such a disappointment to her.

‘Naturally, I didn't expect you to agree with me!' Clemence went on. ‘From the look of you, I guarantee that you forget to put protective cream on your skin at night.'

Angel laughed helplessly, a hint of tears in her eyes.

‘Oh Mother, you really are the giddy limit!'

Later, she and Fred walked in uneasy silence until well away
from the house. In the old days, she would have tucked her hand in his arm. Now, she felt the awkwardness that prevented her from doing so. The night was soft and mellow, the sun a great glowing crimson ball in the sky where it met the horizon. Cows chewed contentedly in English fields. Birds sang, darting in and out of the rustling trees, lush with summer fragrance. A meandering stream gurgled over stones as a kingfisher skimmed its surface, and the evening bees went busily about their work seeking nectar from wild blossoms.

All Angel's senses were tinglingly alive, thinking she had never known anything so beautiful, so serene, as pastoral England, so far removed from the hell of Piersville British hospital. She shivered at the memory, and it was as though she had briefly held happiness in her hand and felt it splinter like broken glass. Fred glanced at her, troubled.

‘How do you and Margot really fare, darling?'

She shrugged. She'd expected him to bring his own affair into the open at once. He made her nervous. Her voice was tight and strained.

‘We live from day to day. We're like a human factory. New intakes of casualties every morning, old ones packed off every evening. Those who are well enough to fight go back again to the trenches. The others get sent home in an ambulance or a box. We're frustrated by the sheer waste of it all. We can't afford pity. If we did, we'd produce an ocean of tears.'

She stopped abruptly as her father's big hand covered hers. She snatched her own away. Fred looked at her steadily, forcing her eyes to turn to him. She saw the pain in his face, the saddened laughter lines about his eyes.

‘Have you made contact with the friend who writes to you?' he said quietly.

She stared at him for a moment. He saw the bitter twist to her lovely mouth and ached to kiss it away as he had kissed her bruises away when she was a child. But this was no
child's eyes that looked back at him.

‘No. And what about
your
– friend?'

Fred took a sighing breath. ‘Harriet is my love, as you very well surmised. She is well, although I suspect you weren't merely enquiring about her health.'

‘I was not! I couldn't care less about her –'

‘But I care very much about her, Angel. I'm sorry if it pains you to know that a father can have a life beyond the four walls of the family home, but please understand that this is far more than a casual affair between me and Harriet.'

She wished he hadn't spoken her name. It made her real, when Angel was trying so hard not to think of her that way. It brought her image between them.

‘I really don't want to hear it, Father,' she spoke defiantly, the brief tender feelings towards him gone.

All the hurt was back, all the smouldering anger. And she welcomed it, because it helped her to replace in her mind some of the horrific memories of Piersville.

‘Do you still want to walk to the village, or shall we go back?' she asked pointedly.

‘We came out to walk to the village, and that's what we'll do,' he replied just as doggedly.

He spoke of other topics, forcing Angel to answer, insisting that she remembered that he was still her father, and as such commanded her respect. It meant something more than pride to Fred that she respected him. He made just one more attempt to clarify his own feelings on the subject of Harriet Garth.

‘Your mother has been ignorant of my relationship with Harriet for a good many years now.' He confirmed her suspicions. ‘The last thing I want to do is to hurt either of them, Angel. Do you understand?'

‘You want my silence,' she answered baldly. ‘Don't worry. I've already decided to save Mother the humiliation.'

He didn't notice her trembling lips, suddenly realising that never in a thousand years could she have foreseen this
conversation. It was Angel then, who deliberately talked about Ellen, about Louise, about anything but the subjects dearest to both their hearts. By the time they returned to Meadowcroft, they were both exhausted from the pretence of trying to act normally in what was a far from normal situation.

She was almost thankful when the week's leave was over and she could meet up with Margot in London. One look at Margot's face told her that her friend's week hadn't been greatly successful either.

‘Mother seems to think I can call at a reception desk and ask for Edward, as though we're staying at some luxurious hotel,' she complained as they were crushed together in the corridor of the train taking them to Dover. ‘She's expecting me to wet-nurse him, just because we're both in France. She's conveniently forgotten the size of the country, and she spent the entire bloody week making me feel guilty because I haven't tracked him down yet.'