The Bannister Girls (7 page)

Louise was going to be matronly very soon if she didn't watch her diet. Ellen was almost tubular in shape, while Angel had curves in all the right places. Fred cleared his throat. He had no doubt at all that many young men would find Angel irresistible before too long.

Without saying a word, Clemence handed Angel the sheaf of flowers, and Angel took them automatically, her eyes puzzled. She read the note, and felt her face flood with colour.

And suddenly nothing else mattered in the world but that Jacques had cared enough to send her flowers. He hadn't quite abandoned her as she had thought. She knew that he'd had to report back to his squadron early. Perhaps after all, he simply couldn't bear to say good-bye…

‘Does that answer all your questions, Frederick?'

Angel heard her mother's accusing voice as though through a mist of joy.

‘Until we see the lights of London together…' it spoke of continuity, of finding one another again no matter how war and circumstances parted them … or time, or space…

Fred took a quick glance around. Ellen sat sullenly after her initial interest in Angel's gift, still smarting over her mother's refusal to let Rose Morton go to Meadowcroft with her. Louise was still hot-faced over her husband's apparent
determination to prove that he wasn't as spineless as he looked. Clemence was stiff with righteous indignation, and Angel looked as though she had just glimpsed heaven.

Fred asserted himself, knowing that it was time to act like the master in his own house.

‘I have my own answer. We shall all go down to Meadowcroft for the duration.'

He ignored his wife's gasp of annoyance, and Angel's startled exclamation. He went on doggedly in a voice they all knew. When Fred had made up his mind, nothing would change it. He held up his hand for silence, though he didn't really need to.

‘We have already established that London is becoming a dangerous place, with the risk of the Zeppelin raids and the strange characters roaming the city these days.' He avoided Angel's eyes. ‘With Stanley volunteering, Louise will be all alone in that great barn of a house –'

‘Except for a score of servants,' Ellen muttered.

‘So she'll be glad of her family's company. It will certainly ease her mother's mind if Angel comes down to the country, away from the risks of the city, and as for Ellen's friend, I see no reason at all why we can't offer hospitality to her if we're all going to be living there. We'll shut this house up and move down wholesale as soon as possible.'

Clemence and Angel were still gaping at him as Ellen leapt towards him and threw her arms around his neck in an unusual burst of exuberance.

‘I say, Dad, that's jolly sporting of you! Thanks a million. Rose will be so bucked. I'll get off now and tell her. I'll bring her along tomorrow to meet you all, shall I?'

‘Oh, of course. Bring her to tea,' Clemence found her voice, and oozed sarcasm. ‘Bring the entire suffragette movement with you, if you wish!'

Ellen didn't take the bait. Instead, she grinned at her mother and blew her a kiss on her way out.

‘No thanks, Mother. You wouldn't want an army invading
the house. And I promise you there's enough of them to qualify for the name! See you all tomorrow, then – oh, and don't forget that Rose is in mourning, will you?'

Her voice sobered as she went through the door, and the little group in the drawing room felt suddenly uncomfortable. They hadn't had to deal with grief yet. The war had barely touched their lives, for all that Bannister's Textiles were now providing cloth for uniforms instead of fine top quality wool for ladies' and gentlemen's garments.

The war was insidiously touching them now, Fred thought. His eldest daughter's husband had enlisted; his second daughter was comforting a war widow; and his youngest had apparently had some secret liaison that was still holding her entranced as she buried her nose in the sweet-smelling flowers accompanied by the cryptic note.

‘Thank-you, Frederick.' Clemence assumed the haughty tone for which she was famous. ‘The very last thing I wanted was to encourage Ellen, and you've just undermined everything I've tried to do with one stroke.'

‘Because I've offered hospitality to some poor woman whose husband was blown to bits in the trenches?' He didn't try to soften the words, and he saw her flinch. ‘Have you so little humanity in you, my dear? I thought your knitting parties and tea and soup wagons on the railway stations were in the same good cause, or am I mistaken?'

‘I do those things because I choose to do them. I don't have them rammed down my throat,' she said stiffly. ‘And Angel – take those flowers and put them in water in your room. Their scent is making my head ache!'

Angel escaped gladly, knowing that everything was going to make her mother's head ache now. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Louise – dear Louise – go to her mother and place gentle fingers on her mother's brow to soothe the pain away. Angel went to the kitchen and asked Cook for a large vase of water, and took it and the precious bouquet upstairs.

Their perfume filled the room. Angel arranged them with
as much care as if they were priceless gems. To her, they meant as much. Jacques de Ville had not seen her as a flighty piece of fluff to take to an hotel room for a night and then forget her. He had cared after all. She had known it in her heart.

She fingered the silken petals of one of the pink tea roses and hugged the secret of her love to herself. There was no way of knowing when they would meet again, but it was certain that they would. Not even Kaiser Bill could destroy what last night had begun. She felt buoyant for the first time since waking up alone in the bedroom of the Hotel Portland.

There was a tap on her door, and she turned away from the artistically-arranged flowers and turned to see Louise.

‘I say, Angel, who are the flowers from? Is it someone Stanley and I know? Do tell. I won't let on, honestly.'

Angel gave a half-smile. Louise meant it sincerely, but Clemence would worm the secret out of her in no time. And Angel would be in deeper disgrace than she was already.

‘I can't tell you, Lou,' she said lightly. ‘It must be a secret admirer. A mystery man!'

Louise stared at her.

‘I'm not sure that I believe you –'

Angel opened her eyes wide, knowing how it always gave her an air of artless innocence.

‘Do you think a well-brought-up young lady would tell such a fib, sissie dear?' She gave an elaborate shrug. ‘Anyway, whoever he is, he'll have to wait to show me the lights of London, if we're all to move down to Somerset.'

Her heart seemed to churn as she spoke. Jacques knew this address, but he wouldn't know where to find her in Somerset. It hadn't been necessary to give him the country address. Her parents would naturally arrange for mail to be sent down, but then her mother would know if a letter arrived for Angel with masculine handwriting on the envelope. And knowing Clemence, she would connect it immediately with the writing on the florist's card.

Perhaps he wouldn't write to her anyway. He might just turn up at Hampstead one day, expecting her to be here … her thoughts raced on haphazardly, just thinking of this complication, but knowing better than to suggest that she should be allowed to stay on alone in the town house with a handful of servants. What an outcry that would cause!

‘I'm not sure that I want to go, but I suppose it's for the best,' Louise said slowly, her attention already wandering from Angel's mystery man. ‘At least Stanley can come down from time to time. He loves the country, of course. I do worry so over where he'll be posted. It would be too much to expect that it will be somewhere near us, of course.'

She rambled on, already back in her own closed world, selfish enough to dismiss Angel's wan face, and hardly giving a second thought to Ellen and her friend's problems. Was that how marriage affected people? Angel wondered. Certainly it had done so with Louise and Stanley.

It created a barrier between the two of them and the rest of life. They had become one entity instead of two, which was why Louise was so disorientated all of a sudden because she would have to think for herself once more.

Angel suddenly thought of Rose Morton, whom she didn't know, but who was going to become part of their lives from tomorrow. She too must learn to think for herself all over again. And there would be thousands of women like her before this war was over. The thought had never occurred to Angel until now.

Afternoon tea the next day was a fairly awkward affair. Clemence had ordered Cook to prepare tiny sandwiches and little cream cakes and ginger nut biscuits, but Rose Morton only toyed with the food and looked very ill at ease. Ellen constantly glanced at her, as though she were a child in need of mothering.

Angel was shocked to see how young Rose Morton was. She looked little older than Angel herself, yet she had been
married and widowed in the space of a year, and she was independent enough to have joined the suffragette movement and to find support in women like Ellen now when she needed it most. She was quite obviously of a different class, but to Ellen that made absolutely no difference. Angel grudgingly admired her sister for the ability to accept people for themselves.

Angel tried to find topics of conversation with Rose, but Louise clearly found her a great embarrassment, because of Stanley's recent commission. She had heard that very morning that he would hold the rank of Major, and he had told her jovially on the telephone that he was to get a desk job somewhere near the south coast of England, and it was unlikely that he would ever leave British shores.

Louise was thrilled and relieved when she heard, but seeing Rose Morton's pretty, pale face and sad eyes, she felt a strange sense of shame, and a fierce wish after all, that Stanley could come home a hero.

Clemence had risen to the occasion as Fred had known she would. By the end of the day, one would have thought that Lady Bannister herself had graciously issued the invitation to Rose to accompany them all to Somerset.

‘We hope to move down to Meadowcroft at the end of next week, Rose dear,' she said kindly. ‘Can you be ready by then?'

‘Of course.' Rose gave the quick tight little smile that vanished as soon as it came. ‘There's nothing to keep me in London. The movement will go on whether I'm here or not. I do appreciate your generosity, Lady Bannister.'

Clemence smiled back uneasily, thinking it a pity that young women should be so passionate about politics and the like these days. And all those girls they called canaries, having their skin dyed yellow by the dreadful TNT that Fred had spoken about, and content to wear those terrible mob caps over their hair, and the uncomfortable oilskins or overalls when they worked. So unladylike. So undignified.

War did that to people, of course. It stripped one of one's dignity. Knitting diligently and pouring tea at railway stations was quite quite different, but just as vital…

At least Angel seemed more docile today, Clemence thought with some relief. She resolved to keep a stricter eye on Angel in the future. One never knew who one's daughter might be meeting in these dreadfully modern days of going without a chaperon.

A letter arrived for Angel on the day before they left for Somerset. Thankfully, her mother was ensconced with her knitting circle when Sophie handed it to Angel on a silver salver. Her heart leapt as she saw the same forceful square handwriting that she would know anywhere now. Some of Jacques' flowers had already started to fade, no matter how hard Angel had tried to keep them alive. But one of the pink tea roses was already pressed between the pages of her heavy Bible.

The letter was dated on the morning they had parted. Incredibly, it had taken five days to cross London, its envelope crumpled and dirty. She threw the envelope onto the fire, and concentrated on the words, hearing his voice as she did so.

‘My dearest Angel,' she read, feeling her pulses race at the endearment. She read it several times before going on to the letter itself.

‘Perhaps it is improper for me to address you so. Perhaps you hate me for leaving you as I did. I pray that it is not so,
chérie
. I could not bear to say good-bye, and there was so little time that morning. It is my greatest wish that one day we shall be together. We knew each other for such a brief while, yet I feel that I have known you always, loved you always. I cherish the hours that we shared, for they meant all the world to me. You gave me something to come back to, Angel. Something to fight for. I shall take your memory into the sky with me. I believe that I also take your love as
a talisman. I leave you mine.

Ever Yours, Jacques.'

Angel's breath was tight in her throat when she finished reading. There was so much more that he hadn't said. She knew that it was unwise to give military details away, even in a personal letter. But she had already guessed that he was flying to France the day after they had met. One day out of their lives was all they had had. She sent up a silent prayer that it was not all they would have.

She pushed the letter into the pocket of her skirt as she heard the knitting ladies preparing to leave the house. This was their last meeting at Bannister House, and Clemence had particularly asked that Angel should bid them good-bye with her mother. It was the done thing, and Clemence was a stickler for doing things right.

Angel tried to compose herself, hoping that her cheeks weren't as pink as they felt, nor her eyes as bright. Despite the poignancy of the letter, her blood sang in her veins, for Jacques was as much in love with her as she was with him. She no longer tried to deny it, nor to pretend that it couldn't happen in a moment. And one day, they would be together for always…

‘Angel, dear, please try to pay attention when Mrs Moncrieff is speaking to you,' she heard her mother's cool voice when she had seemed dazed for several minutes.