We'll Meet Again (2 page)

Eventually, and to everyone’s surprise, Gerald had been packed off to boarding school on the mainland. David had attended a public school in England, as had most of the sons of well-to-do island families, but it was unheard of for a boy from a relatively poor
background to have a private education. Where the LeFevres had obtained the money for his school fees had always been a bit of a mystery as far as the young Colivets were concerned. David had been convinced that Eric had won the football pools, and Adele had suggested that a rich relation had stumped up the cash. Meg had been thought too young to have any opinion of her own.

Being the youngest in the family was definitely a disadvantage. David was the son and heir who was supposed to be studying law in order to qualify him to join the family firm, although Meg was convinced that he spent most of his spare time taking flying lessons. He had always fancied himself as Guernsey’s answer to the Red Baron, and a career in law came a very poor second. Adele’s ambition was to marry a rich man before she was twenty. She had it fixed in her pretty head that if she was not at least engaged by then she would never live down the disgrace. Estelle Plummer, who had been head girl when Addie was in the fifth form at Whitefields Academy, and Meg a humble second former, had enjoyed the grandest white wedding ever seen on the island when she had only just turned nineteen. Estelle now drove round in her very own sports car and lived with her husband in a French-style chateau overlooking Vazon Bay.

Meg’s ambitions were simpler. She wanted to leave home and earn her own living, but unfortunately she had never particularly shone at school and the only sport at which she excelled was riding.
She had sometimes fancied herself as the first female jockey to win the Grand National, or an Olympic champion show jumper, but she knew in her heart that this was wishful thinking. She longed to travel and see the world outside the confines of a small island. She loved Guernsey and she loved her family, but she had always had a vague feeling that she ought to earn the privileges that her brother and sister took so much for granted. There must, she thought, be more to life than simply waiting for Mr Right to come along, which was what her mother expected of both her daughters. Addie was happy to comply and eager to settle down, but Meg felt a restless spirit urging her on to do something out of the ordinary. If only she knew what that was.

She looked up and smiled as Gerald placed a tray on the table in front of her.

‘Tea and cream cakes.’ He offered her the plate. ‘Or are you one of those girls who never eat anything but lettuce leaves?’

She selected a particularly delicious-looking éclair oozing with cream. ‘Not me. I love my food. Anyway, sit down and tell me what you’ve been doing since you left school. Are you still working in London? I seem to remember Marie saying something about it. She’s terribly proud of you.’

He took a seat opposite her. ‘Yes, I know. But mothers always think their offspring are remarkable. I’m sure that Mrs Colivet is the same.’

‘Not with me. I’m the black sheep of the family,
according to Mother. Addie’s the golden girl, and David’s the white-hot hope for the future. I’ve yet to find what my place is in the grand scheme of things. I was born too late to be a suffragette and I’m not clever enough to have discovered something like radium. But I am good with horses.’

Gerald chuckled and his dark eyes glinted with golden lights: like sun pennies on the surface of the waves, Meg thought, dropping her gaze in sudden confusion.

‘I’m sure there’s a great future for you written in the stars,’ he said, pouring tea and handing her a cup. ‘As for me, I’m a humble clerk in a law firm in the City of London.’

Meg leaned her elbows on the table, facing him earnestly. ‘I envy you, Gerald.’

He was about to sip his tea but he hesitated. ‘Why is that?’

‘Because you’ve got the chance to make something of yourself. I’d give my eye teeth to be able to get a job, but my parents won’t hear of it. I can’t leave home without their permission until I’m twenty-one and I’m not qualified to do anything other than pick tomatoes or work in the stables, although I’d do that if they’d let me.’

‘But you have a lovely life, don’t you? Most girls I know would envy you.’

‘I feel such a fraud, Gerald. Idle people like me are no use to anybody. I want to make a difference in the world.’

‘You could go to university and get a degree.’

Meg almost choked on a mouthful of éclair. ‘Me? I failed almost all my exams, apart from art and English. I’d love to work in my father’s office, even if it was only filing things and making tea, but he says that’s out of the question. No, as I said, I think you’re very lucky. At least you’re able to do something worthwhile.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m supposed to be training to be an articled clerk, but I don’t think there’s going to be much chance of that happening now.’

‘Why not?’ Meg stared at him, surprised by his serious expression.

‘We all know that there’s going to be a war. I’ve joined the Territorials and I’ll be one of the first to be called up if push comes to shove with the Germans. That’s why I spent last weekend with my folks. I needed to visit them while I had the chance. I might never see them again.’

Meg swallowed convulsively. ‘Don’t say that, Gerald. You mustn’t even think that way. Mr Chamberlain is going to sort everything out. Mother said so.’

‘Well, if Mrs Colivet thinks that, it must be right.’ Gerald’s wry smile faded into a frown. ‘I’m afraid that your mother never thought much of me. She didn’t approve of my friendship with David.’

‘Now you know what I’m up against. Mother doesn’t approve of anything I do either. She says I
should have been born a boy, and sometimes I wish I had.’

‘That would have been a terrible waste.’

She shot him a glance beneath her lashes. ‘Are you flirting with me?’

‘You’ve grown up to be quite a girl, Meg, and a very pretty one too. But I expect all the fellows tell you that.’

Honest to the last, Meg shook her head. ‘No. You’re the first, as it happens. Mother would have us girls shackled to a chaperone if she had her way. This is the first time that Addie and I have been allowed to leave home without someone watching our every movement. I’m trying to be calm and sophisticated but inside I’m bubbling with excitement. We’re staying with Aunt Josie and Uncle Paul for two whole glorious weeks, and David is going to take Addie and me to the May Ball. It may sound nothing to you, but to me it’s a huge adventure.’

‘I love your enthusiasm for life. You’re like a breath of fresh air and I hope you never change.’

She covered her confusion by selecting a chocolate cup cake. She was on foreign ground where young men were concerned, particularly ones as attractive as Gerald LeFevre. It was embarrassing to be approaching her seventeenth birthday without having had a boyfriend. Addie had managed to slip through the net quite literally by joining the tennis club, which their mother considered to be socially
acceptable. What she did not know was that Adele attended parties at her friend Pearl Tostevin’s house where they drank exotic cocktails, smoked cigarettes and danced to gramophone records playing jazz music. She realised suddenly that Gerald was speaking to her. ‘Sorry, I was miles away. What did you say?’

‘I said I wish we had more time together. I’d love to get to know you better, Meg.’

‘Oh.’ She studied his expression in case he was teasing, but it was clear that he was deadly serious. She crumbled the cake between her fingers. ‘Really?’ She bit her lip. That was a feeble thing to say, but she was suddenly at a loss for words.

He seemed to understand her confusion and he reached across the table to hold her hand. ‘Yes, really, Meg. I like you a lot and I’m kicking myself for not coming home more often. We might have met up in very different circumstances.’

She swallowed hard, staring at their intertwined fingers. Gerald’s were long and slim, pale and slightly ink-stained from constant use of a fountain pen; hers were smaller, square-tipped and suntanned. She raised her eyes to his face and her heart did a funny little hop inside her chest. She opened her mouth to speak but closed it again as she saw a familiar figure teetering towards them on high heels. ‘Oh dear. Adele’s come to find me. I said I wouldn’t be long.’

Gerald rose from his seat as Adele reached the
table. ‘Miss Colivet, I must take full responsibility for keeping Meg talking. Won’t you join us?’

Adele acknowledged him with a curt nod of her head. ‘No, thank you. I came to find my sister.’

Meg patted the seat beside her. ‘Sit down, Addie. Do you know who this is? It’s Gerald. I didn’t recognise him either.’

Adele cast him an appraising glance. ‘Hello, Gerald. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognise you, but …’ she clasped her hanky to her lips, ‘I’m not feeling too good. You’ll have to excuse us.’ She eyed Meg with a meaningful frown. ‘Are you coming?’

‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stay here and finish my cup of tea.’ Meg met her sister’s imperative gaze with a lift of her chin. She loved Addie, but she was tired of being treated like an irresponsible juvenile. No one in the family seemed to take her seriously, and Gerald had treated her like a grown-up and an attractive one too.

‘It’s not seemly,’ Adele said stiffly. ‘Mother wouldn’t approve of your being seen in the company of a young man.’

‘That’s so old-fashioned.’

‘Yes, it is, but I don’t make the rules.’ Adele turned to Gerald. ‘You understand, don’t you? It’s nothing personal.’

‘Yes, Miss Adele.’

His expression was carefully controlled but Meg wished that the deck would open up and send her shooting down to the hold with the cargo for the rest
of the journey. She felt Gerald’s humiliation as keenly as if it were her own, but anything she said now would only make matters worse. She rose to her feet. ‘Thanks for the tea and cake, Gerald. Good luck with everything.’ She held out her hand.

He held it for a second or two longer than was strictly necessary. ‘I hope we meet again soon, Meg.’

‘Yes, I hope so too.’ Meg was surprised to find that she meant what she said. It was not merely a platitude. She would have loved to stay and chat, but she knew better than to make a fuss. Reluctantly, she followed Adele back to their cabin. ‘Why did you do that?’ she demanded once they were out of earshot. ‘We weren’t doing anything wrong.’

Adele glanced over her shoulder. ‘I know that, but at least half those people in the lounge know you if only by sight. What would Mother say if she heard you were consorting with Gerald LeFevre?’

‘We weren’t consorting. We were talking about old times.’

‘I expect you were, but Mother put me in charge and I’ll be the one to get it in the neck if she finds out I wasn’t doing my bit to keep the wretched family name as pure as the driven snow. I know it’s crazy, but while we live at home we have to obey Mother’s rules.’ Adele quickened her pace as they neared their cabin. ‘Oh, heavens, I think I’m going to sick up again.’

Meg thrust the door open and Adele made a dash for the hand basin. ‘Is that why you’re so eager to get
married, Addie? I mean, is it a husband you want or a reason to leave home?’

Resting her forehead on the china lip of the basin, Adele groaned. ‘Both, I think. Pass me a clean hanky, please. And stay with me until we get to Weymouth. I don’t want to fall asleep on the ferry and end up back in Guernsey.’

‘All right. I won’t leave you alone again. Try to get some sleep.’

It was early evening when the taxi pulled up outside the Shelmerdines’ large Victorian house in a well-to-do area of Oxford. A soft pearly dusk gave the wide avenue a magical look and the street lamps cast a hazy orange glow on the pavements. Scatterings of cherry blossom lay like confetti in the gutters and a breeze rustled the tight green leaf buds on the plane trees which lined the street. The houses in Danbury Avenue were all of the period when the emerging professional and merchant classes vied with the academics for their place in the city of dreaming spires. Solid red brick and slightly Gothic in appearance the villas had been designed to house large families and a small army of servants to attend to their needs.

Meg climbed out of the cab, stiff and tired from the long journey, but her physical discomfort did nothing to allay the excitement that bubbled up inside her. She felt like a bottle of lemonade that had been shaken up and was about to explode. The
prospect of a holiday with Aunt Josie was thrilling. Still young and beautiful, and more than twenty years younger than her half-brothers, Charles and Bertrand, Josie was the over-indulged only child of their father’s second marriage. This, she often said, was virtually guaranteed to turn her into a rebel, and at the age of nineteen, while staying with an old school friend and her family in Kensington, Josie had met Paul Shelmerdine, a newly qualified lawyer. Their whirlwind romance had culminated in a dash to Gretna Green where they married against the wishes of both families. Meg never tired of hearing the story told and retold with Josie’s inevitable dramatic embellishments. She often said that she had missed her vocation. She could have acted Merle Oberon and Vivien Leigh off the silver screen had she not fallen in love and devoted herself to helping her husband build his career.

Meg waited impatiently for Adele to find the right amount of change to tip the cabby, but his expression when she dropped the coins into his outstretched palm was not one of overwhelming gratitude. Meg shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. She had intended to wait for their luggage to be disgorged from the boot, but at that moment Josie’s maid, Freda, came hurrying down the garden path, relieving her of that necessity. Meg turned and saw her aunt silhouetted in the doorway with light pooling around her.

Josie Shelmerdine could have been posing for a
fashion shoot. Her figure was arrow slim and her dark hair hung about her shoulders in a pageboy style that complemented her oval face and classic features. In Meg’s opinion Disney’s Snow White might have been modelled on Aunt Josie, and, of course, Uncle Paul was the handsome prince.