CHAPTER ONE
Saturday, 1 March 1941
The milk train from Exeter St. David’s to Paddington was near empty, and at a standstill on the wrong side of the Devon border, thanks to bomb damage down the line. Rose, who’d got up before dawn to catch it, was on her way to the Goring Hotel in Victoria: a twenty-fifth-birthday afternoon tea with her uncle Lionel and older brother, Joe. (It wasn’t her birthday, but since that fell on 29 February, it was as close as she was going to get to one until the next leap year, in 1944. Another five minutes, and you’d have skipped the date entirely, her parents could always be relied upon to write in a card from wherever in the world they happened to be based—Ceylon, for the time being—just a fraction too impatient to arrive at your own party. Tiny, perfect, but with such a pair of lungs. The way you used them, we were sure you’d realized your blunder.) She almost felt like wailing now, not over today’s party—which she was relaxed enough about getting to, she didn’t have to be at Victoria until three—but the much-needed trip to the shops she’d planned to squeeze in first, and for which she’d risen so painfully early. She hardly relished the prospect of Oxford Street’s queues on a Saturday, but stockings, hard enough to come by in London, were as rare as bananas in Devon, and she was on her last pair. Shivering in the frozen carriage, she huddled into her coat, stared through the window, out at the fog of steam and morning mist, the sheep clustered on the icy fields, and thought longingly of her rickety bed, the warmth of her landlady’s flannel sheets, and the extra hour she might as well have stolen between them.
The farmer opposite her—her only other companion in the carriage— huffed, then, for what was surely the hundredth time, got up, peering down the train’s corridor in search of the harried conductor, who’d already informed them that he had no idea when they might be on the move again, and was now, quite sensibly, keeping well hidden. The farmer had told Rose at the start of their journey that it was imperative he wasn’t late into Reading. Imperative. He was on his way to a weekend meeting of the regional agricultural committees. He’d sounded rather proud of the fact, and Rose had suspected he’d been waiting for her to ask him more about the day’s proceedings. She hadn’t. After an endless winter working as a secretary for the Ministry of Agriculture, holed up in a tiny, oh-so-quiet office on an old dairy farm, just outside Ilfracombe, she’d rather had her fill of talk of wheat quotas, arable-land allocations, and livestock provisions. She only wished that when, back in October, her uncle Lionel had tentatively proposed the role to her, offering to pull strings at Whitehall to help her secure it—a place she could breathe the sea air, he’d said, find some peace after the grim events of September, come to terms with the child she’d lost, or at least move on from her dismissal from the air force (she hadn’t moved anywhere; five months in, and the thought of that horrendous disciplinary hearing still made her cheeks flame, in injustice, shame)—she’d listened to her brother’s warning that she was out of her mind to consider it.
“It’ll be grim,” Joe had said, “the dullest of purgatories. You don’t need peace, you need distractions, less time to think. Try the Auxiliary Territorial Service, why don’t you?” He’d given her a smile, half teasing, half sad. “I’ve heard the army will let anyone in.”
She might yet give them a go. She was fairly sure her unfortunate boss— the very elderly, very sweet, very polite Honorable Hector Arden—wouldn’t stand in her way. He’d probably be glad to see her in khaki. That way he could have someone different working for him. Someone who could type, for instance. Or take dictation without having to ask him to slow down, repeat himself, just wait while she got the last bit right.
“No, no,” he’d say whenever she apologized for her ineptitude, “you’re doing quite splendidly. Truly. Quite, quite … well.”
On the bright side, she almost never had to run off for an emergency cry in the milk sheds anymore. That felt like progress. Maybe there was something to be said for the sea air, after all.…
The train juddered into motion, pulling her back to the moment. The farmer opened his mouth, to say what, she never discovered, because they creaked to a halt again. His eyes bulged at her, incredulous, quite as though this sort of thing weren’t par for the course these days.
“I’m sure it’ll only be another minute,” she said, more to placate him than because she believed it.
He clenched his teeth, not believing it either.
In the end, it was another hour before they were properly on their way again. Time enough for Rose to finish the book she’d brought, be forced into risking the train’s arctic lavatories, and the farmer to scout the other carriages in search of a newspaper, return with The People, read it, and fill their own carriage with acrid smoke from a packet of Woodbines.
“Don’t do that,” he said, as Rose got up to open the window, “it’s too cold.”
“Just for a minute,” she said, yanking down the pane.
He stood, reaching round her to shut it again. “I’ll catch my death.”
She stared at him, liking him less, but was too British—with her army chaplain father, and politician uncle—to do anything other than summon a tight smile and say, “Well, we wouldn’t want that.”
He narrowed his eyes, as though trying to decide if she was in earnest, then—obviously deeming the conundrum not worth his effort—sat, picked up his borrowed paper, and flicked ash on the floor.
So he continued the entire way to Reading. With nothing else to distract her, Rose’s mind wandered, landing inevitably on her fiancé, Xander, and the nagging unknown of whether he’d turn up at the restaurant for her tea. He was a press correspondent, over from New York since the beginning of the war. She’d invited him, of course she had, but he hadn’t committed, or even mentioned his plans in the short birthday wire he’d sent the day before. (A quarter century STOP Looks like you made it STOP Here’s to a kinder year STOP) His evasiveness hurt. That wire had hurt. She was still smarting at its brevity, those words. Looks like you made it. She wasn’t even sure anymore that she wanted him to come to the tea. Before September, she’d never have believed that possible. Before the baby, the two of them hadn’t been able to keep away from each other.
She missed that, she really did miss it.…
She sighed unhappily, exhaling a frozen white cloud. The farmer ignored her. They were finally pulling into Reading station and he was on his feet, making a to-do about checking his coat, his ticket. Behind him, the smoggy platform swarmed with passengers waiting for their train, probably all the other delayed London services behind them, too. The clock above the Women’s Institute’s steaming tea stand read close to noon, and although that made Rose twitch (she was going to have to seriously race for Oxford Circus if she was to stand a chance of scouring out nylons and getting to Victoria on time), the farmer at least was leaving, and, in an eleventh-hour act of redemption, left his paper for her, thrown behind him on the carriage floor.
She swooped to pick it up, reclaiming her seat as others swarmed in.
“Christ,” said a soldier, batting the smoke, “someone been having a fire in here?”
They left the window open the rest of the way to Paddington: a welcome relief from the damp smell of everyone’s woolen coats, as well as the stale tobacco. And although the menacing tang of cordite joined the cocktail of scents as the fields gave way to narrow streets, strips of houses broken by rubble, smoke from the previous night’s raid, with the press of bodies it was almost warm in the carriage. For all Rose was squeezed into a corner, jammed between a woman holding a carpetbag and the desolate view outside, she was about as comfortable as she’d been all morning. Nestled in her tiny space, she read the farmer’s paper cover to cover, skimming the war news—most of which she’d listened to on the wireless the night before anyway: skirmishes in Libya, strengthening German presence in Africa, losses in the Atlantic, Britain’s back against the wall pretty much everywhere after the loss of France the year before, all of it so horribly grim—lingering over the middle pages instead, much more than she’d used to in peacetime. It had become a habit of hers, though. She loved the normality of everything printed there, the humanity of the reviews of gallery exhibitions and theater shows, the readers’ recipes and gardening tips. She found it comforting, a reminder that, in all the fear and death, ordinary life was going on, everywhere. There was one sweet tale, too, of a woman who’d found a photograph album of her long-dead parents in the remnants of their bombed family home. The woman had never known the album had existed, and said it was like being given her parents back, seeing their faces again. It made Rose smile, this unwitting gift delivered by Jerry. She wondered if the German bombardier would be happy, too, if he knew what he’d done. Probably, she thought, thinking of the laughing pilots she’d known at her old RAF base in Surrey, and her brother, a bomber pilot himself (although thankfully currently on leave). They were none of them monsters. Just following orders. It was all about the discipline, after all, self-control.
“Something you apparently have none of,” her middle-aged wing commander had pronounced at her dismissal. His voice spiraled up out of nowhere. (It had a horrible habit of doing that.)
“I have plenty,” she’d retorted, keeping her smarting stare fixed on his by an effort of will.
The wing commander had sneered, as though her having the temerity to defend herself had confirmed everything he’d been so certain he knew about her.
“You knew nothing,” she told him now.
Pushing his mortifying disgust away, ready to taunt her another time, she determinedly returned to the article. Some of the recovered album’s photographs had been printed alongside the commentary: grainy pictures of the woman’s parents on their wedding day, a studio portrait of them holding her as a baby. Rose touched her fingertip to it, imagining the babe in her own arms before she could stop herself, feeling her muscles, her heart ache.
It was then, with all her old grief washing through her, making her raw, that she noticed the advertisement. It was wedged beneath the photograph, just a few lines surrounded by a black border, entirely inconspicuous, and yet, very quickly, it became all she could see.
Wanted: companion to escort a young, orphaned child to Australia.
All expenses as well as passage covered.
Interested parties to apply without delay to 32 Williams Street, Belgravia.
“Oh,” she said, the word catching in her throat, more than it might have, had she not just been fixating on that photograph.
The woman beside her turned, like she might be about to ask what was wrong.
Rose hardly noticed. She was reading the advertisement over, wondering what could have happened to make this child an orphan (the war, probably), trying to imagine how terrified it must be, about to be sent to the other side of the world with a stranger. A stranger. She dropped her hand, resting it on her empty stomach. The poor thing.
Interested parties to apply without delay to 32 Williams Street, Belgravia.
But that was so close to Victoria. And they were almost at Paddington, in surprisingly good time. She turned to the window, her pale reflection staring back at her, brow creased beneath her felt hat, thinking.…
But no, no, what would the point be in going to see them? She had a life here. A fiancé. She couldn’t travel to Australia.
Of course she couldn’t.
This tragic little thing was really none of her affair.
Absolutely, categorically none.
She looked again at the advertisement.
How young was young? she wondered.
And where exactly was Williams Street?
“No idea,” said the soldier who’d commented on the smoke, “but someone will know at Victoria. Ask one of the clerks.”
She nodded slowly. She could ask, of course.
No harm in doing that.
When she got there.
And actually, if she gave up on her dash to Oxford Street (so tempting), she could even drop by at Williams Street before tea, perhaps arrange an appointment for later to find out more. Lionel had offered to collect her himself from Victoria and take her to the Goring, but she could just as easily walk. Maybe.
If Williams Street really was on the way …
* * *
It wasn’t. But, having caught the Tube direct from Paddington, she got to Victoria with an hour to spare, and it was close enough as to make passing by barely a diversion at all.
It started to rain as she left the station, though—not heavily, not enough to justify an umbrella (which was fortunate, since she’d left hers in Ilfracombe), but an icy drizzle that the wind made a weapon of, whipping it horizontal, stinging her cheeks, sending discarded rubbish gusting along the grimy pavements. She walked with her head bowed, holding her hat on tight as she followed the ticket clerk’s directions. She didn’t consider giving up and heading straight for the Goring, despite the grim weather. If anything, the fact that she was now so cold and wet made her all the more determined to press on. She’d come this far.…
“Stubborn,” her uncle had pronounced, when she’d stopped to telephone his office at Whitehall—where he was always working, Saturday or no—using one of the station’s public booths to let him know that he shouldn’t worry about collecting her.
“Interested,” she’d countered.
“Impulsive,” he’d said, in the deep voice he always used whenever he was trying to be stern. “Why not wait, we can chat it through over tea?”
“You just want to talk me out of it.”
“I’m worried you’ll get held up,” he’d said, not denying it. “You don’t want to do that. They’ve promised a wonderful spread. Mock-egg sandwiches with mock mayonnaise.”
“Oh, that sounds lovely.”
“Go straight there, have a glass of something. There mightn’t even be anyone in when you get to this Thirty-two Williams Street.”
“Then I’ll leave a note, tell them where I am.”
“They’d probably prefer you sent a letter, gave them warning.”
“The advertisement says to apply without delay.”
“Rather rum to turn up unannounced, though, Rosie…”
And so they’d gone on, him throwing up obstacles, her knocking them down, gently, realizing he was only being so cautious because he cared. Loving him more than ever for that, she’d assured him that yes, she knew how far away Australia was, and no, she had no intention of getting sucked into an interview before tea, she absolutely wouldn’t make any reckless decisions either. “Not without talking to you first.”
“Don’t make any reckless decisions at all,” he’d replied, exasperated, making her laugh, in spite of herself. “Rosie,” he’d said, not laughing, “tell me you realize that this child, however alone, can never make up for—”
“That’s not what this is about,” she’d said, too quickly, no longer laughing either.
He’d sighed heavily, far from convinced (for which she could hardly blame him), and had told her that if she was so miserable in Devon, he’d help her find something new, there was no need to go to such lengths, and there were other options beyond the damned army. She’d said she knew that, but needed to look into this first, she’d always wonder about the child otherwise. Then, hearing him emit another long sigh—picturing him in his paneled office, elegant as ever in a three-piece, his kind face puckered by heart-pinching concern—had entreated him to not worry.
Copyright © 2022 by Jenny Ashcroft