The Bannister Girls (3 page)

‘Now you're being the perceptive one –'

A sudden shushing all around them stopped any further conversation, to Angel's annoyance. Jacques de Ville was definitely the most interesting man she had encountered for a very long time. Vastly more intelligent than some of the so-called intellectuals her parents invited to the house. Jacques was intelligent in a basic, vital way, not merely with the educated claptrap waffled by some of the young men down from university.

They sat through the pseudo-ballerina's performance, the woman teetering about on her points in a ghastly rendition of Swan Lake. Angel tried not to remember the exquisite performance given by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden.

Next there was a ridiculous travesty of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, so sadly terminated for the duration – that awful, doom-laden phrase that was bandied about so often now. Two teams of young men wearing huge dark blue or light blue scarves and caps, sat at opposite ends of the stage behind card cut-outs of the university boats, supposedly pulling on their oars, and singing the most hideous songs composed for the occasion.

‘…we'll pull till we burst,
and we'll get our end in first,
and we'll thumb at the accurs'd
other fe-e-llows…'

‘A bit different to the real thing, Angel,' Jacques said during the obligatory clapping.

‘You've seen it then? Have you lived in England?'

He smiled. ‘My mother was English, and I had an English education, although my family home is near Bordeaux in France.'

‘Oh!' she said softly.

She dearly wanted to ask him more, but the Songbird of the South was coming back on stage to give a final rendition of a rousing ditty to stir all hearts. When it was over, she turned to Jacques once more.

‘Has your home suffered at the hands of the Germans?'

‘Not my home. But when one's country is under threat, then we all suffer.' He spoke with a dignity that touched her more than a long sorrowful dissertation on the evils of war.

‘Come on, Jax. Don't get all morbid!' Dolly leaned forward, and a waft of her Californian Poppy scent enveloped them all. ‘Why don't you and Angel have a dance, same as Reg and me?'

They realised that now the stage show was over, the gaslights were popping into life once more. Dolly dragged at Reg's arm, and frantically beckoned the other two to join them.

‘We'll get no peace until we do,' Jacques grinned. ‘May I have this dance, Miss Bannister?'

‘With pleasure, Monsieur de Ville.'

She replied with as much grace as if this was a society occasion, instead of some anonymous little cellar club, temporarily safe from the German air raids. She went into his arms as the band changed its tune for a dreamy slow two-step as more couples merged onto the floor. There was not much space to move, and the dancing was little more than a slow shuffle to the music.

It was very different from the dances Angel attended with her parents. No gentleman would dare to hold a lady so close, and nor would she lean her head against his shoulder quite so brazenly. But every serviceman in that crowded room held the girl in his arms as though for the last time, and the feeling transmitted itself very forcibly to Angel Bannister. She could feel the thud of Jacques' heart against her body, and it echoed the beat of her own. She could feel his breath on her cheek, and the sudden sweet touch of his lips on her hair.

‘I wish this night never had to end.'

He spoke abruptly, and Angel recognised the low throb of desire in his voice. ‘I wish I could hold you for ever,
chérie
, because I'm so afraid that when I let you go, I shall never see you again.'

‘Don't say that,' she whispered. ‘It sounds so final.'

He gave a short mirthless laugh.

‘Don't you know that's the way we're trained to think these days? Make the most of your leaves, chaps, because it will probably be your last!' He put on a mock British accent as he said the words.

‘Are you on leave?'

‘Why else would I be savouring every minute of this evening with a beautiful lady?'

The words seemed to float between them. The music played on, the dancers all around them moved back and forth across their vision, and they noticed none of it. Their footsteps slowed, until they were hardly moving, just holding each other in the middle of the dance floor.

‘I think I should be getting home,' Angel murmured in sudden fright. ‘You promised to get me a cab, Jacques.'

‘Of course. We'll go at once.'

He steered her through the crowd, waving good-bye to Dolly and Reg, who gave them the thumbs up sign and danced on. Angel retrieved her coat and hat and overnight bag. Everything was being done in reverse. They would leave the club, being careful not to let any light shine outside to alert any enemy aircraft in the skies. They would climb the steep steps to the street. Jacques would put her into a taxi-cab, and the odds were that she would never see him again.

They stood outside, suddenly awkward with one another. The rain had stopped, and the March wind had dropped to no more than a crisp breeze. Angel shivered all the same.

‘Do you really have to go home right away?' Jacques' voice was rich and deep. It wasn't trying to persuade her, but it was as if, like her, he was reluctant for this evening to end.

‘I don't have to,' she said slowly. She looked up at him.

‘Shall we walk for a while, or is too cold for you?'

‘Of course not. I mean, no, it's not too cold, and yes, I'd like to walk.' Why did she suddenly feel so tongue-tied, so gauche and young, where minutes before she had felt so sophisticated and so much in control?

Jacques took the small overnight bag from her hand, and tucked her hand in his arm protectively. She could feel the warmth of him against her, and as she saw him smile in the dim light to which she was quickly becoming accustomed, she felt a new mood take hold of her, a kind of recklessness.

‘Where shall we walk?' she asked. ‘It sounds perfectly ridiculous, but I've rarely walked in London at night before, and never without my parents or a suitable chaperon!'

‘Am I not a suitable chaperon for you,
chérie
?' His arm squeezed her to his side. ‘You will always be safe with me.'

‘I know.' She answered as gravely as if she had known him always. It was almost ludicrous to be walking through the dark London streets, going nowhere, in an area she didn't know.

And yet to feel as if there was a sweet inevitability about everything that was happening tonight. Their footsteps led them to one of London's small green parks, with its surround of wrought iron resembling black lace in the wisps of evening mist. They sat close together on a bench, and Jacques' arm slid around Angel's shoulders.

‘If only we had more time.' Jacques spoke with an odd note of despair in his voice, as the sounds of London alternately loomed or receded all around them. ‘Like everyone else in this bloody war, we have so little time –'

As he stopped abruptly, she glanced up at his strong profile, the breeze ruffling his dark hair, and she felt her heartbeat quicken. What he left unsaid was that they had so little time to be together…

‘Tell me how long you've been with the Royal Flying
Corps,' she said huskily in the new awareness between them that was almost brittle.

‘Seven months. But for the last six weeks I've been on pilot training. It's what I always wanted, of course, only now I've found something that I want even more.'

He looked at her. His fingers traced the soft curve of her cheek, and Angel held her breath. The hum of the late night London traffic was all around them, but she was only conscious of her own heartbeats, and Jacques' voice.

Angel trembled, not needing to be clairvoyant to know that Jacques would now be piloting one of the flimsy little flying machines on the dangerous missions over France.

‘Does your leave last much longer?' She couldn't trust herself to say anything more than prosaic words at that moment. She couldn't even remember if he had already told her. It was all happening too soon … too frighteningly soon…

‘Just tonight.'

From the disciplined flatness of his voice, Angel knew he didn't say it as some kind of emotional blackmail. She had asked the question, and the answer seemed to yawn like a chasm between them. Just tonight. And after that…?

‘Jacques, I think perhaps I had better go –' she heard her own faint voice, and the hint of panic in it. He caressed her hands with his fingertips.

‘If that's what you wish, I'll find you a cab at once,
chérie
. I promised you that. What
I
want, more than anything in the world, is to take you back to my hotel. Scream if it shocks you, but I can't bear to see you go. I don't want to spend the rest of the night alone with just the memory of you.'

Her mouth was too dry for her to speak. Her pulses raced. She knew exactly what Jacques' words implied. And oh, she wanted it too … she wanted
him
, in a way that was totally new and elating and awesome to her…

‘I'm not in the habit of screaming,' she whispered, her answer in the tightening of her fingers against his as she
spoke, and his arms closed around her, enveloping her. She felt as though she was discovering an age-old truth. How long, after all, did it take to fall in love?

They spoke very little in the cab that took them to the Hotel Portland where Jacques had a room for the night. And if this was seduction, Angel was very much aware that she was allowing it to happen. No one was forcing her, even though it was everything her mother had ever warned her against, and everything her sisters would despise.

Louise would be scandalised; Ellen would say scornfully that she'd always known that eventually Angel wouldn't be able to let a man keep his hands off her.

Once they were inside Jacques' room, he pulled across the heavy curtains and turned up the gaslight, and the room was bathed in a soft warm glow that hid the meanness of the decor and the basic furnishings. It wasn't the Ritz, but it wasn't the Ritz they were seeking.

Jacques put her overnight bag onto a chair, and gently unfastened her coat, tossing her hat after it. She seemed too numbed to say anything now. She was here, in a hotel bedroom with a stranger she had known for less than a day, and the enormity of it all was only just beginning to strike her.

The desperately bright tomorrow-we-die atmosphere among the servicemen and the painted girls at the club; the unaccustomed taste of beer in that thick, smoke-filled room; the charisma of the man with her now, so different from the rest … all of it turning her into a totally different person from the Angel Bannister who revelled in a lark with her chums, but who had never done anything like this before.

Some of her friends had spoken daringly of losing their virginity even before they left college, but to Angel, it had always seemed the most precious part of oneself, and not to be given away lightly.

Jacques took her in his arms. His eyes were understanding,
as he looked into hers, seeing them wide and dark with sudden fright. He touched his mouth to hers without urgency or passion.

‘Don't be afraid of me, Angel. Whatever happens will be because you want it to happen. You're so – so vulnerable – and innocent –'

She gave a tremulous smile.

‘That's because I
am
innocent.' She blushed as she said the words, hoping he would understand. How absurd to blush when admitting that she wasn't a woman of the world, but as virginal as the first winter snow.

She was eighteen years old, barely out of college, and compared with Dolly Dilkes, as naïve as a newborn babe.

‘Do you think I imagined anything different?' Jacques said. ‘I felt that you were the woman of my heart from the moment I met you. I would give you the earth if I could. But for now, I can only give you myself – if you want me.'

His words were caring, his meaning crystal clear. He could be a rogue, or a man bowled over by his emotions. She had no way of knowing which. But her heart leapt at the sensuality in his voice, and the blood seemed to flow faster in her body at his nearness. She had known a few lacklustre suitors, but none had ever spoken to her in this way. None had ever aroused a matching desire in her…

The arch young men of her acquaintance were stilted in their English compliments. They didn't touch all her senses the way this man did. But now that the moment was here, did she
want
him, in the way he meant? Did she, in Biblical terms, want
carnal knowledge
of him?

The rigid words of her college religious instruction classes swam through her mind. Outdated, unrealistic, and some said ridiculous in these harsh days of 1915, and yet … and yet…

Angel swallowed at the importance of the decision. Jacques took her hand and led her to the window. Before they reached it, he turned out the gaslight so that they were in
darkness. He pulled back the curtains and moonlight bathed the room. Beyond the window, the outlines of buildings and spires were softly grey against the rich navy blue of the sky. The branches of a lone tree sighed and whispered in the wind.

‘When this war is over, Angel, you and I will come back to this very room and look out on the lights of London. That much I promise.'

When they arrived, she had seen his kit bag on the floor. There was little else scattered about. It was as if he had packed everything away in that small bag for his last night. It had promised to be a sterile night. But now they had each other…

The war seemed very far away from that snug little bedroom at the Hotel Portland. They didn't put on the light again. They undressed by moonlight, to gaze at one another and wonder at the beauty God had given them.

The preliminaries were sensually sweet as they lay together between the cold sheets, but it was more than the crisp cotton fabric that made Angel shiver.