When the Lights Go on Again (25 page)

‘Stop it,’ Lou demanded, but it was too late, the men standing by the bar had heard him and were exchanging grins.

‘There’s a dance on at our base this Friday. I’ve got tickets. We’ll go there together, as a couple and make it plain that we
are
a couple.’ Now Kieran’s voice was lower, so low that Lou had to lean closer to him to hear what he was saying.

‘No,’ Lou protested, in a frantic hiss.

‘We haven’t got any choice, unless you want your reputation to be completely ruined.’

‘Of course I don’t. But we can’t pretend to be planning to get engaged for ever.’

‘We won’t have to. Engagements are broken every day. It’s part and parcel of being at war.’

What Kieran was saying made sense, Lou had to admit. A soon-to-be-engaged young woman could be forgiven for letting her feelings get the better of her, even if, strictly speaking, what she had done wasn’t ‘allowed’.

‘People will ask why we didn’t say we were an item straight off,’ Lou pointed out.

‘Then we’ll tell them that we wanted to wait
until I’d had the chance to speak to your dad,’ was Kieran’s prompt response.

Kieran watched the expressions chasing one another across Lou’s face. He hadn’t been best pleased when he’d heard the gossip about the two of them. Like Lou, he suspected that Patti had had a hand in keeping it stirring and of adding in a few ingredients that were pure fiction, but he had meant what he had said to Lou about his plans. The RAF had opened his eyes to the possibilities of the future and had given him ambitions that meant he would need a clean record, and a reputation for being morally responsible. And that was why he was doing this. No other reason. Certainly not because he felt he had any obligation to protect Lou Campion’s reputation, and to keep her safe from the predators who would now be on the prowl, given the gossip about her.

‘So it’s all sorted then,’ Kieran announced. ‘You’re officially my girl and the two of us are planning to get engaged, and from now on, the only man you’ll be dancing with is me.’

It
would
quell the gossip if people thought that she and Kieran were serious about one another, Lou knew.

‘All right then,’ she agreed, and then gasped in shock when Kieran leaned across the table and kissed her briefly full on the mouth.

Emily had always tried to be honest with Tommy and to talk openly with him, but she had no idea what to say to him about what had happened.

He had gone all quiet and had withdrawn into himself, and Emily was relieved when the school holidays were over. She hoped that being with his school friends would cheer him up and take his mind off what had happened. Not that she could take her own mind off it.

She couldn’t sleep for her misery and anxiety at the thought of losing him. But she had given her word and she meant to keep it – for Tommy’s sake.

It had given her a real turn to learn that Con was Tommy’s father. He had never shown the slightest interest in Tommy, and had in fact demanded that she hand him over to the council, saying that she had to choose between him and Tommy. Well, she had, and she had chosen Tommy.

Everything had seemed so easy before she had known who Tommy really was. She had managed to convince herself that he was all alone in the world and that he was hers. She had told herself that one day he would talk to her about his family and tell her what had happened to them. She’d envisaged comforting him because he’d lost them, and listening whilst he told her about them, imagining that he’d had parents who were married to one another, a decent loving couple who’d been taken by the war, not a sixteen-year-old girl and her own husband. How was she to explain that to him? Con had been unkind to him and he certainly hadn’t been a father a boy could be proud of. In Emily’s opinion Tommy was better off with the fictional parents she had mentally created for
him and not knowing who his real mother and father had been, but the decision to keep that information from him might not be hers to make.

Wilhelm had looked grave and concerned when she’d told him all about Tommy’s past.

‘These parents who were not really his parents, they will not want him back,’ he had tried to reassure her, but as Emily had told him, it wasn’t them who were trying to claim him, but his real mother.

She pinned a bright smile to her face as the back door opened and Tommy came in.

‘I’ve just put the kettle on,’ she told him. ‘You get your coat and scarf off and we’ll have a bit of toast.’

When Tommy didn’t make any response, Emily put down the loaf of bread she had just been about to cut and looked at him. He looked thinner and unhappy.

‘Why did she have to come here?’ he burst out, fighting back tears. ‘Why did she have to come here and spoil everything? I won’t go back to them. I’ll…I’ll run away if anyone tries to make me.’ His hands were balled into tight fists, coins of flushed colour staining his cheeks.

Emily’s heart ached for him, as the same time as it thumped with anxiety at the thought of him running away. He was frightened, she realised, and that was her fault. It was up to her to reassure him and to protect him.

Taking a deep breath she told him firmly, ‘Run away? You’ll do no such thing, young man. No son of mine goes doing something daft like running
away, especially when he’s got no reason to.’ Pretending not to be watching him, Emily sliced the bread. That was better. He was looking a bit more relaxed now. ‘And as for anyone making you go back, that’s daft as well. When I took you in, Tommy, I told the authorities that you were my cousin’s lad and I got the papers sorted out to say that you were, so until you say otherwise, your place is here with me.’

‘And no one can take me away?’

‘No one,’ Emily assured him, ‘not unless you want to go.’

Katie hadn’t forgotten her promise to Luke but she had had to wait until the right opportunity to mention it had created itself, and tonight she was hoping that it had, as she sat with Lady Irene Whittaker, helping her with her sewing.

‘You are a kind girl, Katie. I know perfectly well that you were due to finish your spell of duty in reception over an hour ago, but here you are, helping me out.’

Lady Irene’s praise made Katie feel a bit guilty, her manner so warm and friendly as Katie sat close to her, sewing stripes onto the jacket a newly made-up sergeant had left with her whilst he went to get himself a ‘soda’ – the stripes to be sewn on ‘upside down’ in the American manner – that Katie felt obliged to tell her the truth.

‘Well, I do have an ulterior motive.’

Lady Irene gave her an encouraging smile. ‘Which is?’

Unable to see any scissors, Katie bit the thread
with her teeth, before responding, ‘I had a letter from…from a friend in the army a little while ago. He was in Italy, Naples. He wrote about how awful things are for the women and children there, and…and what some of the women are having to do.’ Nice as Lady Irene was, Katie couldn’t bring herself actually to say what Luke had told her, but it seemed that Lady Irene knew what she meant, because she sighed and put down the shirt she was mending.

‘Those poor people. One feels for them. We sometimes feel sorry for ourselves here in this country because of rationing, but when one hears what others are having to bear…Mind you, I’m not sure that your young man should have burdened you with—’

‘Oh, Luke isn’t my young man. He’s just…just a friend,’ Katie corrected her hastily, pausing before finding the courage to add truthfully, ‘and I’m glad that he has told me. After all, we know all about our boys being killed and injured. We aren’t sheltered from that, and to think of children starving…What I was wondering was if it was worth saying anything here, to the American Red Cross. The Italians
are
our Allies now.’

Lady Irene patted Katie’s hand. ‘Your compassion does you credit, my dear, and if it puts your mind at rest then let me assure you that the plight of those in Europe left homeless and destitute by this war is one that already has the attention of those in authority, and not just from the Red Cross, but from the United Nations authorities as well.’
She gave Katie another kind smile. ‘You may not have heard of this, but I can give you my word that it is the truth. These things take time to arrange and organise properly but you can tell your…friend not to worry. Those who need to know such things are aware of the situation and intend to do something about it.’

Katie smiled at Lady Irene with grateful relief, and then returned to her task as she saw the new sergeant making his way back to her.

‘So what did Kieran want to see you for?’ June asked Lou as they sat down to eat their supper together.

‘He wants us to pretend to be an item and planning to get engaged,’ Lou answered. ‘He says that it will stop the gossip if people think that we’re properly together.’

‘He’s right,’ June pronounced approvingly. ‘I thought all along that he was a decent sort.’

‘He says that we’ll have to be seen together, at dances and that kind of thing.’

‘Well, I’ll do what I can to help,’ June offered generously, ‘like telling people that you’re together, if they start talking about the two of you.’

Lou tried to look grateful but the truth was that she wished desperately that they could have found another solution to the problem. Kieran kissing her like that had given her ever such a shock, and he hadn’t just kissed her the once either. He hadn’t driven off straight away after he’d brought her back, and of course they had been seen together,
and then he’d kissed her again before he’d finally left.

There was no use pretending to herself that she hadn’t been affected when he’d kissed her, or that there hadn’t been all those times when they’d first met him when she’d longed with girlish fervour to be kissed by him. She wasn’t a girl any more, though.

The last thing she wanted now was to go and make a fool of herself by letting him see what kind of effect he could have on her. Not, of course, that she would do that. But just to be sure she’d have to tell him that they could act like a couple without him kissing her.

Marcus had gone back to his men, after a brief leave of twenty-four hours, but their bed still smelled comfortingly of him. Francine buried her face in his pillow, breathing in the scent of him.

She must get up; there were things she had to do. Marcus hadn’t been very keen when she had told him about her plan to rent a house in Whitchurch so that she could go there to be with Jack whenever possible. It would hurt Emily to part with him, she knew, but
she
was his mother. She would make it up to him for all that he had suffered, all that they had lost as mother and son.

But Jack thought that Vi was his mother. Francine pushed away the bedclothes and reached for her dressing gown. She would find a way of telling him the truth.

About Con, as well as about herself?

There was no need for her to think of that now. She must win Jack’s trust again and his love first, before she started telling him just why he was so important to her.

‘Katie?’

Katie gripped the telephone receiver tightly as she heard Eddie’s voice, before saying, ‘Yes, it’s me, Eddie.’

‘I’m in London. I want…Can I see you? I…I need to talk to you. You’ve heard about Leonard, of course?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t believe that he’s gone. It’s so ruddy unfair. A good decent chap like Leonard. They should have taken me instead. I wish they had…’

Katie didn’t try to stem his emotional outburst. She knew how close the two cousins had been.

‘I really need to see you, Katie,’ Eddie continued. ‘We could meet at the Savoy. I’m staying there.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she agreed. ‘What time?’

‘Now. As soon as you can make it. I’ll be in the American Bar.’

She’d only just got in from work but Katie could hear the strain in his voice.

Leonard’s Memorial Service had taken place earlier
in the month. She hadn’t attended it herself; it had been a strictly family affair, held in the private chapel on Eddie’s parents’ estate. She had thought about Gina, though, all day, glad that her friend would have the support of her own parents and Leonard’s family, but at the same time knowing that no amount of support could possibly take away the pain of her dreadful loss. Eddie would have had leave to attend the Memorial Service, and it had been plain from the emotion in Eddie’s voice just how much he had been affected by the death of the older cousin he had admired. So many lives were damaged by every single lost life. Like ripples in a pool the effect spread outwards. There was no point in trying to make sense of why one man should die and often the man standing next to him should not. Leonard had been such a good man. In Leonard’s case, though, it did seem particularly unfair. He and Gina had both known loss and suffering before they had met. They had been so happy together. Katie remembered the small secret smiles she had seen Gina and Leonard sharing on New Year’s Eve; the smiles of a couple totally at ease with one another, and very much in love. Now Gina had been left a widow and two small children had been left without a father.

It was because of her own low spirits as much as out of respect for Leonard’s death that she changed quickly into a dark grey wool dress, before she left Cadogan Square, less than half an hour after Eddie had telephoned, in a taxi she was lucky enough to find on Sloane Street.

Eddie had sounded so desperate, poor boy, and rather as though he had already been drowning his sorrows a little. Who could blame him for that? Eddie wasn’t a heavy drinker, by any means. Katie didn’t want to think about how grim it must have been to stand there at Leonard’s memorial service. January was such a depressing month at the best of times, with spring so far away.

The bar in the Savoy was crowded as usual, but Katie quickly spotted Eddie and made her way towards him.

He looked haggard, as though he had lost weight, his eyes red-rimmed and bleak with emotion, the pain she could see in them briefly replaced by relief when he saw her.

‘Katie.’ Eddie hugged her so tightly that his grip almost hurt, his face buried in her hair, his voice muffled.

‘I came as soon as I could,’ Katie told him, gently pushing him away. ‘Are we eating here?’

‘We can do. I hadn’t thought about food. I haven’t thought about anything really except Leonard.’

Katie put her hand over his, feeling almost maternal towards him.

‘Why don’t we find a table and sit down?’ she suggested.

A couple of minutes later they were seated at a table that gave them a bit more privacy, away from the busy bustle and jovial atmosphere around the bar. It was hard not to think about the last time they had come here, with Gina and Leonard.

Then they too had been in the same celebratory mood as those grouped around the bar tonight. Poor Eddie. Katie reached for his hand again.

‘I’m so sorry about Leonard, Eddie,’ she told him gently. ‘I know how close the two of you were.’

‘He was one of the best, Katie. One of the very best. My best friend as well as my cousin. Now he’s gone. He was more than a cousin to me, always there to set me straight and help me out, the brother I never had. Whilst he was there…Now it’s all down to me, Katie. I’m feeling very much like my parents’ only child, and if I go, then the whole family will go.’

‘Don’t, Eddie. Please,’ Katie begged him. ‘You mustn’t think like that.’ She had never heard him talk like this before, with such obvious desperation and despair in his voice. All the teasing insouciance that she always associated with him had been stripped away, leaving the bare bones of what he really was, Katie recognised. Now his upbringing and its traditions truly showed. Katie felt desperately sorry for him.

He turned to her with a faint echo of his normal smile. ‘Oh, but I must, Katie. That is exactly what I must think about and why I’m here.’

Katie was still holding his hand and now he put his other hand on top of their clasped hands and looked directly at her.

‘Losing Leo has made me see things differently. Of course I’ve always known that ultimately it’s up to me to marry at some stage and produce a son, but I’ve always thought of it as something to
do after the war, not during it, when there are so many…’

‘Pretty girls to flirt with?’ Katie supplied for him, trying to lighten his mood, but instead of smiling he simply shook his head. ‘Leonard was the one who always looked out for me, when I first learned to ride, when we went to school and then later when we both joined the navy. But now he’s gone. It seems impossible, but it isn’t.’

Katie squeezed his hand in silent sympathy.

‘The parents haven’t said anything, that isn’t their way, but it’s pretty obvious that for as long as this war goes on there’s going to be the risk that I won’t get to see the other side of it. Somehow I never thought of that whilst Leonard was alive. But now…I had a long talk with my grandmother after the memorial service and it’s like she says, eleven generations of our family have passed on the estate and the title to the next, and now it’s down to me to do the same thing before it’s too late.’

Katie was horrified.

‘She said that to you?’ Eddie’s grandmother, a graceful straight-backed individual in her late seventies, with snow-white hair she wore in an elegant chignon, was very much the matriarch of the family, Gina had told her, adding, ‘She’s very old school – you know, keen on one doing one’s duty and that sort of thing. The whole family is a bit in awe of her. Luckily she approved of me otherwise I doubt that Leonard would have dared to propose to me.’

Katie had laughed, knowing that Gina’s last comment had been a joke, but sensing at the same
time the importance the whole family placed on the Dowager Lady Spencer’s views.

Katie, who had only met her once, at Gina and Leonard’s wedding, had found herself contrasting Eddie’s grandmother’s strict view on protocol and the right way of doing things to her own parents’ more bohemian way of life, and she hadn’t envied Gina having such a stern presence in her life. Not that Leonard and Eddie’s grandmother had been anything less than gracious to Gina. But then Gina’s family, whilst not ennobled, still had a recognisable pedigree so far as the dowager was concerned.

Eddie was giving her a serious look. ‘She only said what needed to be said, and the truth is that I’m glad that she did. She made me think, and what she made me think is that I can’t imagine anyone I’d be happier married to than you, Katie.’

Now Eddie had shocked her. A proposal from him was the last thing she had expected – and the last thing she wanted? Feeling guilty, Katie reminded herself that Eddie had just lost his cousin and best friend and that that was enough to make anyone think about their own future. In Eddie’s case that future included the need to marry and have a son to continue his family line. It was therefore only natural that marriage should be very much to the forefront of his mind. But surely not to her?

‘I’m very flattered, of course, Eddie,’ Katie told him, groping for the right words. ‘And I do understand how you feel, but I can’t help thinking that your family, your grandmother, will expect you to marry, well, someone from your own background.
Someone who would be far more suitable than me.’ Someone far more suitable and thus, far more acceptable.

‘The thing is that I may not have much time.’ The bluntness of Eddie’s honesty tore at Katie’s tender heart. ‘And besides,’ he added, ‘no one could make me a better wife than you, Katie. You are the best of the best. Leonard always thought so. And you don’t need to worry about all that lady-of-the-manor stuff. There’ll be plenty of time for you to pick it up from m’ mother. In fact, I’d say she’d welcome having you with her, and get you trained up for taking over from her when the time comes.’

So, privately Eddie knew himself that she wasn’t the ideal choice. Katie didn’t know whether to laugh or take offence. On balance, laughing would probably make things easier, she acknowledged, as she told him firmly, ‘Eddie, I can’t marry you. It wouldn’t be right.’

‘Why not? Because you’re still in love with that corporal who treated you so badly and let you down?’

Gina must have told him about Luke.

‘Certainly not,’ she denied. ‘Luke doesn’t mean anything to me any more.’

‘Prove it then, and marry me,’ Eddie responded promptly.

‘Eddie—’ Katie tried to stop him, but he shook his head and held her hand tighter.

‘I know what you’re going to say, but don’t say it yet, Katie. Hear me out, please. Leonard always warned me that I should think more about my
duty to my inheritance and less about having a good time. I used to laugh at him. I never thought…I thought we’d both see this ruddy war through. I thought if anyone deserved to live it was Leonard, but now he’s dead and the future of everything my family has fought and worked for is dependent on you, Katie.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Katie objected shakily. ‘It’s emotional blackmail.’

‘I know,’ Eddie admitted, ‘but I have to use whatever means I can to persuade you to agree, and I haven’t much time. We’re almost in February now, and once we get into spring it won’t be long before the Allied Command gives the orders that we’ve all been waiting for and the invasion of Northern France begins. I can’t say any more than that, but I know you’ll understand what I’m trying to say.’

‘I do understand,’ she agreed, ‘but…’

‘Don’t turn me down, Katie, please. I’ll make you the happiest you could imagine being, I promise you.’

‘I know you think we could be happy together, Eddie, but marriage is such a huge step, and for us to marry under such circumstances…’ Katie paused, wanting to let him down gently. She thoroughly understood what was motivating him, but even if she had loved him in that way and not as a friend, and had wanted to marry him, she wouldn’t have wanted to agree to such a rushed marriage. The war made people do things they wouldn’t do in peacetime. It gave things an urgency and an immediacy that propelled people into rash
decisions, and rash emotions. She knew that from her engagement to Luke. She had already told herself that she wouldn’t get heavily involved with anyone until after the war had ended and things had returned to normal, when people could see one another clearly without the threat of war colouring their vision.

‘Please don’t turn me down, Katie. I owe it to Leonard and to my family to do my best to provide an heir – and the sooner the better. I know how unromantic and selfish that must sound, but I promise you that it doesn’t mean that the only reason I want to marry you is because of that. I do love you, Katie, and I think that if you put your mind to it you could very easily love me. Couples get married every day with less to bind them together than we have.’

Katie felt desperately sorry for him, but she had to stop him.

‘Eddie, we can’t get married,’ she told him gently. ‘Your grandmother would never approve.’

If she had hoped to bring the discussion to an end by mentioning Eddie’s grandmother, she quickly discovered her mistake.

‘Of course she will,’ Eddie insisted. ‘Why shouldn’t she? Oh, I know she’s dropped a few hints about some girl whose grandmother she was at school with, but I dare say she’s plain and as dull as ditchwater. Not like you, Katie. No,’ he shook his head, ‘you’re wrong; I shall prove that to you. And when I do, Katie, I shall expect you to say yes.’

He was cutting the ground from under her feet,
although thankfully it sounded very much to Katie from what he had let slip that his grandmother had already selected a possible bride for him.

However, before she could say so he continued, ‘I’m on leave at the moment, but I’ve got to go down to my ship tomorrow morning for a meeting. I could be tied up there for a couple of days or so, but as soon as I can I shall go home and tell my parents and my grandmother that I want to marry you.’

‘And if they disapprove—’

Then you’ll drop the whole idea, Katie had been intending to say, but before she could finish her sentence Eddie cut in determinedly, ‘They won’t disapprove. The next time I see you, Katie, it will be to put an engagement ring on your finger, with my family’s blessing and approval. We won’t want to wait long to get married. The sooner the better, in fact.’

‘Eddie…’ Katie tried to stop him, before giving a small sigh, and reflecting that there was really no point in her trying to make him see reason when he was so determined not to listen to her. He would, though, listen to his grandmother and his parents, and they would, Katie felt sure, make it plain to him that they would not want him to marry her.

‘Let’s make a date for Valentine’s night,’ he told her.

What could she say? How could she refuse?

‘Very well,’ she agreed, but she felt very cowardly for not telling him straight that she didn’t want to marry him, and letting his family be the ones to make
him see that a marriage between them would never work.

‘Of course it would be much better if you said “yes” now,’ Eddie told her. ‘Then we could buy your ring, and we could tell the family together. Present them with a
fait accompli.
I’ve got a room here – we could have celebrated our engagement there, in a very special way. What do you say, Katie?’