DAUGHTERS OF CORNWALL
Fern Britton

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Fern Britton 2020

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Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Fern Britton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008225254

Ebook Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008225261

Version: 2020-05-04

Epigraph

Here’s tae us. Wha’s like us? Damn few, an’ they’re a’ deid.

A toast adopted by Scottish regiments everywhere, and drunk to the memory of the First Battalion The Scottish Regiment, who in late 1914 prepared peacefully for summer camp, and yet who by 1918 were mostly dead.

In memory of my great-uncle, Second Lieutenant Herbert Edward Hawkins of First/ Fourteenth Battalion of the (London Scottish) London Regiment, 1887–1917.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part Two

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Part Three

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Keep reading …

About the Author

Also by Fern Britton

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE
Caroline, Callyzion, Cornwall
Present day

It is said that the failings of a family bloodline repeat themselves through the generations until eventually someone, possibly centuries later, breaks the mould. Whether they break that mould with a newly acquired error of personality, or by bringing in a fresh bloodline with its own chaotic genetic make-up, it’s hard to tell.

Whatever, I am certain your family will be no different to mine; a long line of women who have toughened themselves on the anvil of life. All with broken marriages, broken hearts and long-held secrets.

The story I am about to tell you is the one I have observed from my birth. Tales I have picked up, as any child does, sitting quietly and forgotten, eavesdropping as the adults reveal their shocking truths.

They dropped their pebbles in the pond and the ripples spread outward through their lives and into my own, where they lap still.

Everything I have, I have worked hard for.

Everything.

I bear no grudge.

I am not a materialistic woman. I am a widow living within my means watching my beautiful daughter take the leap from adolescence to adulthood, carving her own path. She will find a suitable boy, settle down and be a wonderful wife and mother. As I was.

As my mother almost was.

As her mother, Clara, certainly wasn’t.

Glamorous, strong and passionate, she lived her life by one rule. ‘To be a liar, you have to have a very good memory.’

And she should know.

I didn’t know any of this until very recently, and I must say it has rather disturbed my equilibrium. I like to think of myself as a woman who does not wear her emotions on her sleeve.

Losing my mother was dreadful, of course, as was my husband’s illness and death. I was proud of my outward stoicism; my resilience in the spotlight of grief.

That was until I overheard one of the church ladies talking about me behind my back. I heard them in the choir stalls discussing my ‘lack of emotion’, my ‘cold-bloodedness’, and then something I would prefer not to think about, it being so crude and unpleasant. All I will say is that their unkind laughter followed me for days afterwards.

I miss my husband dreadfully. His kindness. His affection. His success. He climbed the ladder of the corporate world and gave me the secure world I craved. Darling Tom.

He knew how hard my fatherless upbringing was and how hard I have striven to lead a normal life after the rackety one my mother brought me into.

All that has paled into insignificance now, for I have discovered another family skeleton. My mother was not the only one to have her secrets. To get pregnant out of wedlock.

Everything I thought I knew is a lie.

It arrived on my doorstep just a few days ago. A huge steamer trunk made in the days when people travelled the world by ship rather than hopped on an aircraft. The courier thrust his docket at me to sign. ‘This has travelled a long way to find you,’ he said, as if personally affronted. ‘All the way from Malaysia, via Singapore and Kent, by the looks of things. And it’s bloody heavy.’

‘Are you sure you have the right address?’

‘You are Caroline Bolitho?’

‘Yes. Well I was, that’s my maiden name.’

‘Then yes this is the right address. I went to the Vicarage just up the road in Callyzion first. But the woman there said the only Bolitho she knew was you and she gave me this address.’ He handed me a docket.

‘Sign and print please, and I hope you don’t find a body in there.’ He laughed until I gave him ‘The Look’, the one my husband and daughter feared.

I signed the piece of paper and opened the door wider for him to carry it into the hall for me.

‘Sorry, love. My job is to deliver to the door. That’s as far as I’m allowed to go. Cheers. Oh, hang on.’ He patted the top pocket of his shirt. ‘Here. You’ll need this. It’s the key.’ He handed me a small brown envelope and left me with the mysterious cargo.

By the time I had dragged the trunk into the lounge, I needed a cup of coffee to give me the energy to open the thing. To be honest I was more than a little wary of the contents. What could they be? Why had it been sent to me? Who had sent it to me?

I finished the last of the two digestive biscuits that I had allowed myself and rinsed my coffee cup, putting it on the drainer.

‘Come on, Caroline,’ I told myself. ‘The time has come.’

Back in the lounge, the trunk sat waiting. I circled it, reading the various labels. Most were aged and illegible but there was a name printed along the front edge. I went back to the kitchen and got a duster and an aerosol can of furniture polish.

The trunk was leather and, as I removed the grime, the natural hide began to shine. I made out the letters E.H.B. and an address for a rubber plantation on the island of Penang, Malaysia. I recognised the initials. Ernest Hugh Bolitho, my grandfather. My mother’s father. All I knew about him was that he had died in Penang, back in the Seventies, having never returned to his English family.

I kept on polishing until the entire bag emerged, old but gleaming. I had been through so much of late that the idea of opening up the past was both comforting and terrifying. I had kept my family tucked out of sight for years and only Tom knew the circumstances of my birth.

I often wonder if keeping my secret to myself actually pushed people away from me.

Tom was my first boyfriend. I couldn’t believe it when he spoke to me one Easter Sunday after Church. His parents were High Anglicans and kept the sort of decent, normal home that I had longed for as a child.

The trunk was almost clean now but I kept on polishing until there was nothing more to do.

The time had come to open it.

PART ONE

Chapter One
Clara, Kent to Callyzion, Cornwall
December 1918, one month after the First World War ended in Armistice

I came up from Kent last night.

Just me.

I knew, as soon as I got the letter from Bertie’s mother, that I had to go. I packed my bag and willed myself to stay strong. I kissed them both, Philippa and Mikey, and told them I would be back soon; then I left them, shutting the front door behind me, and walked away towards the station. I would not let them see my tears. My withered heart – now rigid against life’s blows – would make sure of that. And yet there was still a voice in my lungs screaming at me to turn around, go back, give up this fool’s mission. I faltered and almost turned, but the pull of seeing Bertie’s home and meeting the family that might have been mine was stronger.

In London I found a boarding house close to Paddington Station. ‘Just for the one night,’ I told the unsmiling landlady. In reply she pointed to the poster behind her. No noise after six, no gentlemen callers, breakfast at eight and money up front.

I handed over the payment she required and she showed me to my room. It was at the front of the house with a view of a terrace of white stuccoed houses. Really quite pretty.

I didn’t sleep well and was up early, fearful that I would miss my 7.35 a.m. train to Cornwall. Quietly I washed and dressed, creeping over the dingy rag rug which barely covered the splintered boards. Obligingly they did not squeak.

Downstairs, I let myself out into the dark morning. From the pavement, through the bow window, I glimpsed a dining room. Tables laid up for breakfast. I hadn’t eaten since leaving Kent yesterday, but I was not hungry.

I walked briskly to Paddington, in the cold morning air, my breath coming in cloudy trails. Paddington Station loomed ahead, lit up in the dark, a welcome glow for morning travellers like me.

Even with the sun not yet up, the station was busy. A steady stream of recently arrived commuters was heading towards the exits and the underground. Smart young working women, older men with bowler hats and velvet-collared coats, and young men in uniform, some on crutches, some with missing arms, and one with dark glasses and a white stick. I swallowed a hard lump that popped unexpectedly into my throat. My eyes darted over each of them. Could Bertie be among them? Maybe these men had seen him? Fought with him? Had news of him? Had watched him as he wrote his long and loving letters to me?

The blind soldier was greeted by an older woman, who touched his arm and said his name.

‘Mum?’

I had to turn away; the moment was private and I couldn’t watch.

‘Want help with your bag, miss?’ A porter tapped my shoulder, making me jump.

‘No. I’m fine, thank you.’ I held my bag close to my thigh and set off to find my platform.

This would be the longest train journey I had ever taken. Bertie and I had talked about it many times. The excitement of my meeting his parents and brother and sister.

‘We’ll take a picnic to the beach. There are sand dunes and rock pools full of little crabs and shrimps. Do you like to swim?’

‘I haven’t tried,’ I said.

‘I shall teach you,’ he said, wrapping his arms around me. ‘It’ll be cold. But I shall keep you warm.’

I had never known anyone as kind.

He kissed my hair. ‘My parents will love you.’

I was nervous now. I had found my platform and my train was waiting.

I almost turned around to go home, back to Kent and the two people I loved so dearly. A swirl of anxiety, panic, was building in my chest. Would I be found wanting by Bertie’s family? Or would they accept me immediately, as one of them? They might like me, but would I like them?

The train carriages had long corridors along one side and a set of small seated compartments down the other, each compartment housing six seats.

‘Excuse me.’ I stopped by a railway employee holding a whistle and a flag. ‘Could you point me to Carriage C, compartment two, please?’

The man kept his eyes on the passengers surging around his platform. ‘Next one down.’

‘Thank you.’ I found it easily. A piece of white paper, with C marked on it, was stuck to the open door of the carriage.

Stepping on board I turned left and found my compartment. It was empty. Thank goodness. I was not in the frame of mind for idle chatter with strangers.

I settled myself on the seat next to the window, forward facing, with my travelling bag on the seat beside me. Hoping that by spreading myself out like this I might deter fellow passengers.

I removed my gloves and coat and folded them on top of the bag next to me. I was building a rather nice defence. Once settled, I looked out of the window, watching the farewells. Kisses for the women. Handshakes for the men.

‘I’ll write to you and let you know how it’s all going.’

‘I’ll miss you.’

‘See you soon.’

‘I love you.’

I wondered what their stories were. So many people with smiles on their faces, hiding God knows what in their minds.

Pushing through them I saw an older man, on his own, quite short, with a tiny bristling moustache. He had a folded newspaper under his arm and was making heavy weather of lugging a suitcase down the concourse. I took an instant dislike to him. He had that look of arrogance and entitlement that so many men carried. He was obviously looking for his carriage and, through the window, he caught my eye. I shrank back in my seat.

He lifted his fist and banged his knuckles on the glass. ‘Is this Carriage C?’ he bellowed.

I looked down at my shoes as if I hadn’t heard.

He knocked louder. ‘Is this Carriage C?’ he shouted again, as if I were deaf.

I was forced to reply. ‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you say so?’ He shook his head and tutted, then bent to pick up his heavy case.

In seconds he was bumping in through the sliding door of my compartment.

‘Ah.’ He seemed to inhale and exhale all the air in the carriage simultaneously. ‘I do like an uncrowded carriage.’ He thumped his case on the floor.

I saw immediately that his mission was to spread himself even wider than I had.

He coughed and huffed, moving his case almost up against my own small bag, effectively hemming me in.

I looked firmly out of the window as all this was going on. At least he couldn’t sit next to me, and surely he wouldn’t sit in the seat directly opposite me? Without turning my head, I slid my eyes around to check what he was doing. He was dusting his bowler hat with his coat sleeve. I suspected it was done to attract my attention. To trick me into some sort of conversation. I stayed silent.

His hat went on the rack above the seats. His coat went next, removed and carefully folded. And finally, brushing some invisible lint from his jacket, he sat down. Exactly opposite me, just as I had hoped he would not, his knees mere inches from my own.

‘Ah.’ He made himself comfortable and opened his paper. ‘That’s better. Beautiful day for travelling, isn’t it?’

I did not reply. I did not wish to encourage any dialogue. I turned my eyes back to the window. What did he mean, it was a beautiful day for travelling? There was the station roof above us so you couldn’t tell if the sun was up yet, and on the platform there was still people’s breath on the chill air.

‘I shall open the window for us,’ he said. ‘Can’t stand being cooped up.’ He put his paper down and stood again. I moved my knees to one side. He pulled at the leather window strap and lowered the glass, letting it go with a thunk. He sat down. ‘That’s much better.’

The smell of burning coal and soot, shouts of porters loading baggage, not to mention an icy blast of December air, flooded the carriage.

I wondered if I should put my coat back on but that would only provoke more unwelcome words.

I could feel him looking at me. Inspecting me over his half-moon glasses. ‘You look as if you could do with some fresh air,’ he said, ‘if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘I’m perfectly fine, thank you.’

‘Going all the way, are you?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Penzance?’

‘No.’ I looked down at my lap. My velvet bag which held my ticket, purse, handkerchief, lipstick and cigarettes were in it. How I wished it had held a book or magazine too.

‘I am,’ he continued. ‘Going all the way to see my son. He’s just come back from France. Alive, thank God. Lost a couple of fingers. A miracle really. Hand grenade exploded on him. He made corporal. Like his grandfather in Crimea. Very proud of him. Do you know Penzance?’

I shook my head and again looked out of the window, praying that he would stop. My prayer went unanswered.

‘Terrible thing, this war. The war to end all wars is what they are telling us.’ He lifted his newspaper and waggled it at me. ‘So many young men gone. Heroes, the lot of them. Apart from the conchies of course.’ He sniffed loudly. ‘Cowards.’ He shook his head and tutted. ‘They’re all right, Jack. They never had to face the enemy, did they? No. And what’s happened? We have lost a generation. All those brave lads. The brightest and the best, all gone.’

My fingers tightened around my bag, rubbing the weft of the velvet. I’d heard all of this before. People spouting off about stuff of which they had no experience. Patting my hand. Telling me how proud of Bertie I must be. I had wanted to scream at all of them. Shout at them, ‘Of course I am proud of him, you fools.’

I felt the unbidden anger raging in me again and I gripped my hands into two bony fists, hoping to gain control over the violence within me.

The man kept going. ‘We won, though, and that’s the important thing.’

‘Please, don’t,’ I said loudly, surprising myself with the vehemence in my voice.

He stopped smiling and looked at me in astonishment.

‘What?’ he said. ‘Don’t talk about the war? I was only making conversation,’ he said. ‘Being civil. I told my wife, I blame the suffragettes. Young women have forgotten how to make pleasant conversation. All that driving ambulances and thinking they can do a man’s job …’ He stopped abruptly, a thought dawning on him. He nodded slowly, ‘Oh, I see. You’ve suffered a loss, haven’t you? Someone close? I can always tell. A lot of women have suffered. Many sweethearts left behind. I don’t suppose you’ll ever marry now. Not with all them young men gone. For ever. I feel sorry for you.’

He lit the fuse inside me and my bomb exploded. ‘How dare you. How dare you presume to talk to me in this way. You know nothing about me.’

‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on, dear. Grief, that’s what it is, love. Turned many a woman difficult, grief.’

‘Shut up. Just shut up and leave this carriage and close the damn window as you leave.’ My voice was rising in pitch and volume.

‘Crikey,’ he said, gathering his things, ‘looks like some poor bloke is better off dead than married to a fishwife like you. You’ll never get a bloke like that.’ He stood up to retrieve his hat and coat. ‘I shall find a more amiable travel companion, if that’s the way you are.’

Outside on the platform, the last door was slammed shut, a guard’s whistle blew and the train suddenly lurched forward. The man fell back almost into my lap. I pushed him off me and he fell forward onto an edge of his huge suitcase, dropping his paper as the wind was knocked from him. He scrabbled to his feet, rubbing his shoulder.

I picked up his newspaper and threw it at him. ‘I pity the poor woman who married you.’

Shaking his head at me, but keeping his lips firmly closed, he left the compartment.

Left in the peace of my carriage, I closed the window and then searched my little bag for my handkerchief, angrily wiping away hot tears as, with another jolt, the mighty train wheels, powered by coal and steam, began to pull away from the platform.

I cried tears of grief and anger on and off for a further hour or so, appalled that I should do this in a public space but glad that it deterred the few passengers still walking the train’s corridor from joining me.

And now, several long hours later, I was finally crossing Brunel’s great iron bridge, the Royal Albert, taking me over the river Tamar, from Devon into Cornwall.

Chapter Two
Clara, Callyzion
December 1918

I leant my head on the cold glass of the train window, drinking in the outside scenery. Bertie had described all this to me time and time again. He had insisted on reciting all the romantic names of the Cornish station stops.

‘As soon as you are over the bridge you come to Saltash. The Gateway to Cornwall.’

‘Why is it called Saltash?’ I had asked.

‘No idea. Then after Saltash it’s St Germans, Menheniot, Liskeard—’

I interrupted him. ‘I’ll never remember all those names. Just tell me where I need to get off?’

‘I’m getting to that, Miss Impatience.’ He inhaled comically and continued. ‘Saltash, St Germans, Menheniot, Liskeard and then Bodmin. I shall be waiting for you at Bodmin.’

‘Will you really?’ We had been lying in the tiny bed of our Ealing home. ‘I’m not sure I have had anyone wait for me anywhere before.’

‘What sort of blighter would I be if I didn’t pick up my beloved fiancée after she’s travelled all that way to see me?’

‘You’d be a very bad blighter indeed.’ I smiled.

He held me closer, dropping a kiss onto my head. ‘I can’t wait for you to meet my family. Father will adore you. Mother too, or though she may not show it at first, she’s always cautious of new people. But Amy and you will be great friends. She’s always wanted a sister. Brother Ernest can be a pompous ass but he’s not a bad egg.’

‘It’ll be wonderful to feel part of a family again.’

‘You are the bravest person I have ever met.’ He squeezed me tightly, his arms encircling me. ‘My stoic little squirrel.’

At this point, I am sorry to say I had already told a few lies to Bertie about my upbringing. Needs must sometimes. ‘My parents were wonderful,’ I fibbed, ‘and I miss them every day, but I feel they would be very happy for me now.’ Shameless, I know.

‘Do you think they’d approve of me?’ he asked.

‘Oh Bertie,’ I smiled, ‘they would adore you.’

The train guard was walking the corridors as he did before arriving at every station. ‘Bodmin Road. Next stop Bodmin Road.’ I readied myself to disembark.

Standing on the platform, I watched as the train chuffed away down the line and out of sight on its journey towards Penzance. The sun had set and the Cornish winter air blew gently on my skin. I took a scented lungful.

Bertie had told me that it was warm enough down here to grow palm trees. ‘You’re pulling my leg,’ I had laughed. ‘No, I’m telling the truth. We have one in our garden. I will show it to you.’

I picked up my bag and walked past the signal box painted smartly in black and white, towards the ticket office where a sign painted with the word TAXIS pointed. Even now, the half-expected hope that Bertie would be waiting for me made me breathless with longing. I imagined him running towards me. His long legs carrying him effortlessly. His strong arms collecting me up easily, lifting me from the ground so that my face was above his, the look of love shining between us.

‘Excuse me, miss.’ A man with a peaked hat walked towards me. ‘Would you be Miss Carter?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought so. You looked a bit lost on your own.’ He had a kind face but not too many teeth. ‘Welcome to Cornwall.’ He held out his hand and I shook it. He had a good handshake. Dry and strong.

‘I’m your taxi to Callyzion. Name’s Chewton. At your service. Let me take your case, miss.’

‘Oh yes. Reverend Bolitho wrote to me to explain. It’s very kind of you both.’

‘No trouble. I’ll put your case in the back and you sit up front next to me. You’ll be warmer.’

Chewton was a fountain of all local knowledge. He gave me a running commentary with potted histories of the family houses as we passed, and pointed out a couple of shops he thought I might be interested in.

‘There’s the post office and a very nice ladies’ wear shop. Won’t be as good as your London shops, mind, but you’re bound to find something pretty to suit you. Mrs Chewton told me to tell you that.’

I felt a pang of alarm. ‘Do many people know I’m coming?’

‘Oh yes. You’re the talk of the parish. Mr Herbert was loved by us all. We missed him when he was doing his rubber planting in Malaya. What a thing, eh.’ Chewton shook his head incredulously. ‘Malaya. Cor dear. He had a pet monkey, you know.’

I felt the familiarity of tears pricking the back of my eyes. ‘Yes. Bingo?’

‘That’s right. Mr Herbert told me about all the tricks that monkey played. Running off with Mr Herbert’s breakfast, hiding things round the house.’

The tears tightened in my throat. ‘I wish I had met him.’

‘Ah,’ Chewton smiled, ‘you may not have met the monkey but you did meet the man.’

‘Yes.’ I swallowed hard. ‘He was a wonderful man, wasn’t he.’

‘Brave man,’ Chewton replied. ‘One of the best.’

We said nothing more to each other, sitting with our own memories.

We were out of Bodmin now and the headlights struggled in the shadowed lanes. Great tunnels of trees blocked out any starlight. I could make out small cottages, some with their lamps still lit. And as the car came to a sharp bend in the road, a white owl took off from a gatepost and flapped away, calling as it went.

At last we passed a road sign telling us that Callyzion was just one mile away. Winding our way down a steep lane, then bursting out of the darkness of another tree tunnel, we turned left at a tiny crossroads with a small village green. Upon the muddy, mole-hilled grass, a sign advertised CHRISTMAS JUMBLE SALE, CHURCH HALL, 2.00 P.M. SUNDAY.

Chewton pointed it out to me. ‘We’m raising money for our village war memorial. Mr Bertie will be on it.’

Three houses down he stopped the car. We were outside a large iron gate.

‘Here we are, miss,’ he said as he pulled on the handbrake. ‘The vicarage. Let me get the door for you.’

He carefully helped me out of the car and then lifted my case from the back seat. I searched in my velvet bag for my purse. ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘Nothing at all, miss. The account has been settled by Miss Amy.’

I held out a shilling as a tip. ‘Please. For your trouble.’

He waved it away.

‘For the war memorial at least?’

He looked at the coin doubtfully before winning the battle in his mind. ‘Thank you, miss. Very kind. That’ll be for Mr Bertie.’ He touched the peak of his cap. ‘Have a nice stay with the vicar. He’s a lovely man.’

He drove off, waving a cheery hand, and left me standing outside the cold iron of the house’s gate. Bertie’s home lay beyond. I looked up at it. A big house. The sort I would have drawn as a little girl. A front door in the middle and, on either side, four bay windows, two up and two down.

It sat in the middle of a square garden with a hedge that seemed to go all the way around it and a path leading from the gate to the front door.

There were several neighbouring houses; all had wisps of smoke coming from their chimneys indicating the warmth inside. From the vicarage chimney there was nothing. Bertie had warned me to pack twice the usual amount of warm underwear as his parents did not like heating the house unless completely necessary.

‘Maybe when there’s ice on the inside of the windows,’ he’d told me, ‘but not before.’

I hadn’t told him that I knew all about freezing homes in bitterly long winters. I didn’t speak of my cruel beginnings to anyone. My past life was a closed book. My secret. Instead I had told him that my parents had been farmers in Kent. Hard-working but comfortably off and that I was an only child. That bit was true. The next bit was not. I told him of a tragedy that had struck when a fire in one of our oast houses had taken hold. Both my parents and one of the pickers had died trying to put it out. Fortunately, there was enough money from the sale of their farm, I told him, for me to go to a boarding school for young ladies where I had been taught extremely well by very kind women who, with care and love, had helped me to forge a new life. All a lie.

Standing outside Bertie’s home now, I was glad he would never discover the truth. What lay in front of me was a fresh chapter in my new life. A chapter without Bertie.

It was getting cold and I was shivering. I wrapped my coat tighter around me, collected up my case and opened the tall iron gate. Taking a deep breath for courage, I walked the chequered tiled path to the front door.

The navy blue paint was chipped, particularly around the letter box. I imagined the letters of condolence that had been dropped through it since the black-edged telegram had been delivered. The terrible news.

IT IS WITH THE DEEPEST REGRET … KILLED IN ACTION … GOD SAVE THE KING.

I hesitated before pulling the bell. Bertie would want me to be brave. ‘No point mooning about, old girl,’ I could hear him saying.

The bell rang deep in the house.

Inside, I imagined the two servants Bertie had talked about. Dora, the maid of all work and Cook. They would have heard the bell and been expecting me. Dora would be drying her hands on her apron, pushing the escaped strands of hair under her cap, and scurrying from the kitchen, into the chilly hall and to the front door. I thought how Cook would have told her off more than once that day. ‘Stop your jittering and jumping. She’ll be here soon enough. Finish the ironing, that’ll keep your silly brain quiet.’

And now here I was. The stranger they had been waiting for. Mr Herbert’s intended. Clara Carter. A thin, pale woman in her early twenties with hazel eyes that could be lively if they weren’t so sad.

How would Dora describe me later, downstairs behind the closed door of the kitchen?

‘The poor lamb is broken with grief. I could have hugged her there and then.’

Cook would clasp her hands over her bosom in sympathy. ‘Oh, the poor duck. What was she wearing?’

‘Black, of course. I think she had rouge on her cheeks to cheer herself up, and red lipstick too.’

‘Oh dear,’ Cook would say, ‘Mrs Bolitho won’t like that. Nor Miss Amy neither. What about her hair?’

‘Brown and crimped into a bun. And she’s so thin. There’s no meat on her.’

Cook might shake her head sadly. ‘Well, she won’t get fat in this house. Another mouth to feed on the housekeeping that Miss Amy gives me – it doesn’t go far enough as it is. What did you say to her?’

‘I says to her, “Hello, miss.” As polite as I could. “Welcome to the vicarage. Please come in.” And she says, “Thank you”, in a nice voice, and she looked around the hall while I put her case by the hat and coat stand, and then I says, “Miss Amy will be along presently.”’

She would lead me into the parlour.

‘Did you take her coat?’ Cook would ask.

‘Oh no. I asked her but she wouldn’t. Shivering with cold she was.’

Through pursed lips, Cook would say, ‘Miss Amy needs to get that fire alight and quick. Mr Herbert would be horrified to know his sweetheart is upstairs getting frostbite.’

Dora would shake her head. ‘I asked Miss Amy if she wanted it lit after lunch to warm the room up but she said …’ Perhaps Dora would suck her cheeks in and make herself a little taller to speak in a posh dismissive voice, ‘“Whatever for?”’

Cook would sniff. ‘If she doesn’t get a move on, Miss Amy is going to be a shrivelled-up old maid. What a way to greet your own brother’s fiancée. And where’s Mrs Bolitho?’

‘Lying down. It’s the stress of it all. Or that’s what Miss Amy said. If you ask me, Miss Amy is the one who’s giving Mrs B stress.’

‘Pass me the eggs,’ Cook would demand, ‘I shall bake a welcome cake. A big one. It’s the least I can do for the poor girl.’

And now, Dora came to open the door and all that I imagined became reality. She took my bag, led me to the parlour, and left me alone.

I could not stop shivering. The parlour’s bleak fireplace was swept clean. No ashes, no kindling, no box of logs at its side.

I wondered if I should take off my coat and gloves. Would it be impolite to keep them on? My gloves were covered in smuts from the train so I removed them and stuffed them into my pockets. Were there smuts on my face too? A mirror was above the mantelpiece. Speckled and so high you would have to be over six foot before you could inspect yourself. Bertie was so tall he would have been able to see himself in it. I took out my rather tear-dampened handkerchief and rubbed at my face.

If Bertie were here he would do it for me. Bending down to make sure I looked presentable. He used to make a joke out of his height. He was at least a foot taller than me.

When we lay side by side, he would wrap his warmth around me and call me his little squirrel.

‘I mustn’t cry. I mustn’t cry. Be strong.’ I spoke into the empty room.

I put my hanky back in my bag, and felt for the cigarette case lying within. Silver and slim. Bertie had given it to me the first time he’d come home. Before he had to go back to France. We’d been walking on Ealing Common. He’d taken my hand and led me to a small bench where we sat down. ‘I have something for you.’ He’d reached inside his army tunic, pressed the little package into my hand and watched as I opened it.

‘Bertie!’ I remember turning it over in my hands, tracing the ornate engraving on the precious metal. ‘It’s beautiful.’ I laughed, ‘Now I shall have to take up smoking properly.’

‘That’s the idea. Every time you put a cigarette to your mouth,’ he said, rubbing his thumb over my lips, ‘think of me.’ He’d bent his head and kissed me.

‘I will think of you all the time,’ I said, trying not to sound too drippy but failing. ‘I will dream of you when I sleep.’

And now, here I was, standing in his house, in a room he knew so well. My knees went weak and I recognised the impending wall of grief that would floor me at any moment.

I pulled a cigarette from the case and tapped it on the lid, tamping down the loose tobacco strands as he had taught me. ‘Get a grip, old girl.’

I lit it and inhaled deeply, my lipstick staining the unfiltered end. A sense of calm filled my veins.

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Bertie standing next to me; ready to introduce me to his parents.

His pride in me.

My pride in him.

His mother would be happy and welcoming. ‘You must be cold! I will get Dora to light the fire and get Cook to send up afternoon tea.’

I squeezed my eyelids tight, pushing back the inevitable tears, but my silly brain conjured up an image of Bertie as a small boy: crawling under the chenille cloth of the tea table; winding himself in the heavy, bottle-green velvet curtains; jumping from one stiff sofa to its twin, unable to dent the horsehair cushions.

I could smell him. Macassar hair oil and tobacco smoke.

For a fraction of a moment I heard him say my name. I opened my eyes with fright and hope.

It came again. ‘Clara?’

He was here? There had been a mistake? He was alive?

I reached a hand up to the marble mantel and gripped it hard, willing myself not to faint.

He called again. ‘Clara?’

He was just on the other side of the door. I could hear his heels on the tiled floor of the hall.

The door opened and my heart leapt into my throat. Tall, smiling. Bertie was standing before me.

I let go of the mantel and opened my arms, waiting for him to embrace me.

He offered his hand to shake.

‘Clara,’ he said. ‘At last we meet. Ernest Bolitho. Bertie’s brother.’

He caught my arm as my knees buckled.

‘Oh my goodness. The journey has exhausted you.’

‘I’m so sorry. May I sit down?’ I felt for the nearest chair.

‘Not that one,’ he said sharply, ‘that’s Father’s. And …’ He looked at the cigarette burning its way towards my fingers, ‘I’m sorry, but Mother does not approve of ladies smoking.’ He took the cigarette from me and crossed the room to open the large sash window that looked out, as I was to discover the next day in daylight, over the back garden.

I could see the bell tower of the church lit up beyond.

Outside, I knew, lay the palm tree Bertie had told me about and, in the middle of the lawn, an apple tree with a swing. ‘I love that swing,’ he’d told me. ‘Best toy Father ever made for us. When I take you home, you shall sit on it, under the apple blossom, and I shall push you so that your toes reach the sky.’

‘Bertie was always getting caught out with his smoking.’ Ernest’s voice broke through my memory as he threw the cigarette stub out of the window and turned back to me. ‘I’ll leave the window open. Mother has the nose of a bloodhound. How was your journey? You look tired. You’re shivering.’

‘I’m fine, honestly.’ My eyes were fixed on the bare dark branches of the apple tree outside. Bertie would never push me on the swing under the blossom after all. To my embarrassment and Ernest’s discomfort, I burst into tears.

‘Oh dear,’ Ernest said awkwardly. ‘Has anyone offered the facilities?’ he asked, looking around the room; anywhere but at me. ‘Maybe you’d like to freshen up?’

‘Yes, I would,’ I managed. ‘Thank you.’

‘Our maid isn’t too bright, I’m afraid. God knows where Amy got her from but,’ he coughed, ‘needs must, I suppose.’

He pulled the bell rope by the fire and within seconds Dora entered.

‘Yes, sir?’

He gestured towards me whilst issuing orders. ‘Please show Miss Carter to the facilities and ask Cook to organise some tea.’

The maid bobbed. ‘Yes sir.’

I gathered myself and gratefully crossed the room to join her.

I was suddenly aware that I was badly in need of the lavatory, and also to cool my face and neck.

‘Oh, and Dora,’ Ernest barked as we left, ‘put Miss Carter’s luggage in her room. Which one has my sister got ready?’

Dora, her eyes darting from mine to Ernest’s, replied quietly, ‘Mr Herbert’s room, sir.’

I thought I might faint again, ‘What?’

Ernest hitched up the knees of his perfectly pressed Oxfords and sat on one of the ugly sofas, oblivious to my distress. ‘Good. Come back when you’re settled.’

I followed Dora into the hallway and watched as she collected my small case from the foot of the hat stand and began to climb the stairs.

‘I’ll show you to your room,’ she said. ‘It’s a nice room. It overlooks the church.’

I took in my surroundings rather than speak. Linoleum, cold and bare in patches, covered the landing floor. Dora stopped at the second room on the left. ‘Here you are.’ She opened the door with her free hand and stood aside to allow me to enter.

A single bed with a brown headboard faced the one window. A washstand stood in the corner and a heavy mahogany wardrobe against the wall opposite.

Dora put the case on the bed. ‘Lavatory is out of the door, turn left. It’s at the end of the corridor. Miss Amy’s room is just across the landing.’

Shakily, I thanked Dora, and waited until she had closed the door behind her.

Here I was, here in Bertie’s room. He had told me about it. This bed was where he had slept. Those books, haphazardly lying in the bookcase, were the ones he had read. He had sat at that small table, labouring over homework. Biting the end of his pencil and staring at the church at the end of the garden for inspiration.

I opened one of the wardrobe’s double doors and was hit by the powerful smell of mothballs. On the rail were three bare hangers, presumably for my use. I opened the other door and stepped back quickly. Hanging there was Bertie’s coat. The one he had worn when I had first met him. I reached out and touched its sleeve then pulled it to my nose. Yes, this was him. This was his scent. ‘Bertie,’ I whispered into the scratchy wool. ‘It’s me. I’m here in your room. I’m here.’

There was a knock at the door and I dropped the sleeve, shutting the doors quickly.

‘Come in,’ I called.

A woman, very tall and bony, entered. She wore a navy blue dress almost to the floor, high-necked and belted, and stood in the doorway without expression. Her sharp eyes took me in from head to toe. ‘Clara. Mother and I thought this room would be most suitable for you.’

‘Oh yes, it’s … lovely. Thank you. You must be Amy? Bertie talked a lot about you.’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes alighted on my case on the bed. ‘But you haven’t unpacked yet.’

‘I only just got here and I’d like to freshen up before I come down. If that’s all right?’

‘Tea will be served in the parlour. Father will be home at four thirty.’ She moved as if to leave, then as an afterthought turned back. ‘I don’t like to keep meals waiting.’

Chapter Three
Clara, Callyzion
December 1918

I brushed my hair, put on my smarter cardigan and touched up my lipstick.

The church bell was striking the hour as I went downstairs and entered the parlour. It wasn’t looking much more cheerful than when I’d left, but at least there was a fire, albeit struggling, in the grate. What it lacked in heat, it attempted in cheer.

Ernest was on one sofa, as I had last seen him, and Amy was sitting opposite him, with an elderly woman on the other.

‘Here she is.’ Ernest stood up and smiled. ‘Mother, this is Clara.’

‘Come closer, my dear.’ Her smile was clouded with grief. ‘My eyes aren’t what they were and I want to look at you.’

‘Mrs Bolitho.’ I went to her. ‘Thank you so much for inviting me.’

Her grey eyes darted over my simple clothes and figure.

‘You have a good, ordinary face,’ she said to me. ‘I like that. Bertie liked it too. I know. But, too much lipstick.’

I stood my ground. ‘Bertie liked it.’

His mother folded her arms and chuckled. ‘Bertie always liked spirited people. That’s good. He also told us that you have family in Kent?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what do they do?’

‘They farmed. Apples and hops mostly. But we had an excellent dairy herd too.’ My lies poured easily into the room.

‘How many acres?’

‘Goodness knows. Around two hundred at least.’

Ernest interjected. ‘Jolly good.’

‘Yes,’ I gave him my practised, sad smile. ‘But nothing can substitute for the loss of one’s parents when one is so young.’

‘Goodness. We didn’t know,’ Ernest said apologetically. ‘How dreadful for you.’

Mrs Bolitho seemed to me to perk up at this information. ‘Oh, my dear. Come and sit down next to me here.’ She flapped her hand at Amy, ‘Move up, dear, let Clara sit between us.’ I squeezed my hips down into the over-sprung seat, feeling the thigh bones of the women either side of me.

Amy tried to pull hers as far from me as possible, while her mother wriggled herself around to see me better. ‘What on earth happened? How did your parents die?’

I hadn’t yet thought through a cogent explanation, so I dipped my head and fumbled in my cardigan pocket for a handkerchief.

‘Mother,’ rebuked Ernest, ‘Clara will tell us if and when she wants to.’

Mrs Bolitho covered her disappointment with a sniff. ‘Well I am surprised Bertie didn’t tell us when he had the chance.’ A sigh and a short pause before asking, ‘You did tell Bertie didn’t you?’

‘Yes, of course. I told him everything.’

‘I am glad to hear it. And how is London? I believe you work there?’

‘Yes. As a secretary at the London Evening News.’

‘How interesting. We don’t get that newspaper here, of course. My husband prefers The Times.’

Before I could respond, Amy spoke across me. ‘Mama, it’s time for your cough medicine.’

‘I am perfectly fine, thank you.’ Mrs Bolitho focused on me again. ‘I want to hear all about how you met our dear Bertie. And Ernest, dear, liven up that fire, would you?’

I watched as Ernest got on his knees by the hearth and reached for a log. Every movement reminded me of Bertie and the first time I saw him.

‘Bertie and I met at a bridge club. In Piccadilly.’

Mrs Bolitho nodded. ‘And do you play good bridge?’

‘Not as well as Bertie.’ I remembered him sitting opposite me at the small table, his slender fingers holding his cards. ‘We won a couple of tournaments together.’

‘You must be pretty good then.’ Mrs Bolitho turned to Ernest, who was concentrating on the fire. ‘Clara plays bridge. Perhaps, one evening, we should play.’

‘Rather,’ said Ernest. ‘Amy? Want to make up a four?’

‘I’d rather not.’ She almost shuddered with the thought of it. ‘Where is Dora with the tea?’ She checked her watch. ‘She’s late. I’ll go and chivvy her along.’ She left the room in a rustle of skirts and left the three of us looking at the fire and trying to think of something to say.

‘You must think me very rude,’ I remembered. ‘I haven’t thanked you for the taxi you sent to the station.’

‘Amy organised that.’ Mrs Bolitho waved a hand in the direction of where Amy had disappeared. ‘She runs the house for me. The last few weeks have weakened my spirits.’ She coughed lightly. ‘Was Chewton waiting for you?’

‘Yes, he was.’

Ernest laughed. ‘I bet a penny to a pound that he gave you a tour of the fleshpots of Callyzion.’

Mrs Bolitho tutted. ‘No need for that language. Your father wouldn’t like it.’ She picked up the small watch pinned to her bust. ‘He should be home any minute. I told him to be here at four thirty on the dot.’

As she finished her sentence, as if on cue, we heard the sound of a key in the front door and a deep manly voice called, ‘Halloo. I’m home! Has Miss Carter arrived?’

‘We are in the parlour,’ Ernest called back.

The door opened to reveal an enormous man both of height and girth. Bertie had once described his father as ‘comfortingly solid’, and now, seeing him, I couldn’t think of any better words. He was dressed in a black frock coat, black shirt, black trousers and black gaiters. The only colour was the snowy white of his dog collar.

‘Aha.’ He looked at me warmly. ‘My goodness, how wonderful that you are actually here at last.’ He took two strides to cross the room, and took my hand and patted it. ‘You are so welcome here. Even though Bertie didn’t have a chance to tell us about you we want to know everything for ourselves. You are certainly as pretty as we imagined.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Do you not think so, my dear?’ Without waiting for an answer, he looked about the room. ‘Where is tea?’

It took just a few minutes before Cook’s Victoria sponge and tiny meat paste sandwiches arrived, pleasing everyone and giving us all something fresh and safe to talk about.

After tea, Rev. Bolitho withdrew to his study and Mrs Bolitho returned to her bedroom for a rest.

Amy bustled about with Dora, giving instructions for supper and returning the parlour to its pre-tea state.

Ernest and I were left alone. Ernest began the conversation.

‘Awfully pleased you came. It seems from what his friend Jimmy said, Bertie was quite swept up by you.’

‘And I by him.’ I looked at my lap. ‘It’s so nice to be here, with his family. The people who loved him best.’

Ernest cleared his throat. ‘Yes. We miss him.’

A spark jumped from the grate onto the rug. Ernest reached out one long leg, without having to get up, and stamped it out. Both of us sat looking into the flames.

‘I miss him very much.’ One log, its bark now catching a flame, shifted slightly, turning the flame from blue to yellow then orange. ‘How did your parents find my address?’ I asked.

‘With difficulty.’ He smiled wryly. ‘We didn’t know about you or your whereabouts. It was only when we received Bertie’s personal effects …’

I looked up, fearing what they might have found amongst Bertie’s belongings. Not all my letters? Not every private, shaming, loving word we wrote to each other? Please God, no.

Ernest was speaking again. ‘Among his things were letters from his old friends. One of them, Jimmy?’

My heart flipped anxiously. Jimmy was the friend who had rented us the flat in Ealing. ‘Yes.’ My throat was dry. ‘A good friend of Bertie’s. What … what did his letter say?’

‘Jolly lucky really. He mentioned an address in Ealing.’

I clenched my hands, waiting to be shamed. ‘Oh yes?’

‘It was the first we had heard of you. He wrote something along the lines of, “hope Clara is comfortable in the Ealing flat”.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘He asked how Bertie was doing. The usual stuff. Talked about his own marriage. So anyway, as we had an address for you, Father decided we ought to meet you and we could share our …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Our happier memories of Bertie.’

I relaxed. Bless Jimmy. He had revealed nothing.

‘I was so surprised and pleased to get your parents’ letter,’ I said. ‘It found its way to me eventually. I had to leave Ealing a while ago, you see, and return to Kent – a family matter – but I had left a forwarding address. Just in case.’

‘Well, I am sorry the whole process took so long. But you are here now.’

‘Yes. Here I am.’

‘And can you stay for Christmas?’

I was taken by surprise. I thought I would come for a couple of days, soak my grief in the place that Bertie called home and then return to Kent, to where I was needed the most.

‘I don’t want to be a bother.’

‘No bother at all. I happen to know that Mother is very much wanting you to stay until the New Year.’

New Year? I couldn’t stay for as long as that. Could I? ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Do you have plans?’ I could see Bertie in his eyes, in his voice.

‘Well I … I haven’t brought anything with me.’ I couldn’t stay. I mustn’t. What would Philippa think? How could I miss only my second Christmas with Mikey?

‘Amy can lend you anything you need,’ he said airily. ‘Say yes and it’s settled.’ He smiled at me. Not Bertie’s smile but so similar.

‘Well, I … I don’t have any plans.’

He stood up. ‘Excellent. Now what say we have a game of cards? Rummy?’

And that is how we filled the hinterland between tea and dinner. He told amusing stories about himself, Amy and Bertie growing up. Hide-and-seek in the organ loft, swapping their father’s sermon for a shopping list and the Easter they all had chickenpox. Ernest was an easy person to be with then. I began to warm to him.

A dinner of beef broth, followed by tiny lamb cutlets and then apple crumble, filled an hour or so of small talk.

We delicately manoeuvred around the subject of Bertie, not one of us wanting to upset the other, and then Ernest announced that I was staying until the New Year, which occasioned much delight in Bertie’s parents.

‘And, Amy,’ Ernest went on, ‘I’ve told Clara that you would lend her anything she doesn’t have.’ He grinned.

I looked up and caught her giving him a horrified stare.

‘No, no,’ I said quickly. ‘I will be fine, honestly.’

Mrs Bolitho chipped in. ‘Amy has plenty of nice things in her wardrobe that she can share. She wears so few of them, it will be nice to see them out and about.’

Amy gave her mother a tight smile and said quietly, ‘Mother, you know it would be impractical for me to wear anything special while I am looking after the house.’

I felt her embarrassment. ‘Honestly,’ I smiled at her, ‘I wouldn’t dream of borrowing your nice clothes. I might spoil them, and then what would you wear for special occasions?’

Mrs Bolitho leant closer to me and, laughing at her daughter, said, ‘Amy doesn’t like special occasions. I can’t remember the last time she went out and had some fun.’

Amy paled, her hands tightening their grip on her napkin. ‘Mother, please.’

Mrs Bolitho blithely continued to discomfort her daughter. ‘But you are young and have your whole life ahead of you, darling.’

The napkin was released and Amy stood. ‘I wonder what Dora has done with the apple crumble?’ We watched her leave.

‘Don’t worry about her,’ Mrs Bolitho said to me.

Reverend Bolitho peered over the top of his glasses and looked at his wife. ‘Louisa. Let her be.’

When Amy returned, we ate our apple crumble in silence.

And when Dora cleared it away, Amy stood again and – looking anywhere but at me – said, ‘Mama, come along, you are tired and I don’t want your cold getting any worse.’

The gentlemen stood as mother and daughter pushed themselves away from the table. As Mrs Bolitho passed me she paused to kiss my cheek. ‘Goodnight, my dear, and sleep well.’

When they had left, I waited a handful of minutes before saying, ‘If you don’t mind, I think I shall retire too. It has been a lovely day, though, and thank you for allowing me to stay.’

‘Clara, what else could we do? It is what Bertie would want and therefore it is what Louisa and I want,’ Reverend Bolitho said kindly. ‘You must be tired.’ He and Ernest stood as I pushed my chair back.

‘Goodnight, Reverend Bolitho.’

‘Please call me Hugh,’ he said. ‘If Bertie were here, I would have liked you to call me Father.’

Tears sprang to my eyes and my throat constricted. ‘My dear,’ he said kindly, ‘you will always be part of our family now, whatever the future holds.’

‘Goodnight, Clara.’ Ernest smiled. ‘Breakfast is at seven thirty.’

‘Thank you. You have all been so kind.’

‘We’ll do something tomorrow,’ Ernest said. ‘Maybe a walk after breakfast?’

‘I should like that.’

‘Excellent. Goodnight, old thing.’

The same words Bertie would use.

Head down, nerves raw with exhaustion, I climbed the stairs to my room. Bertie’s room. I was longing to be on my own.

I closed the door gratefully and, leaning on the back of it, cried lonely tears.

Chapter Four
Clara, Callyzion
December 1918

I cried until there were no tears left. Exhausted as I was, I pushed myself to empty my suitcase and get undressed. I hung my one good suit, my office suit, in the wardrobe next to Bertie’s old coat, then a newish dress that Bertie had liked, and finally the dress I had been wearing.

My clean underwear and stockings I put in the small drawers by the bed, my shoes neatly by the wardrobe and my nightdress on the pillow. Bertie’s pillow. I picked it up and buried my nose in it. It smelt of fresh air and lavender, but not of him.

Quickly taking off my underclothes, I wondered whether I should wash them in the bathroom and hang them to dry on the back of a chair as I did at home. Would that be thought wrong? Should I leave them for Dora to do? Or was that not the done thing, either? After much dithering I decided that I would wash them myself tonight and then ask, discreetly, tomorrow what the system for laundering was.

Slipping on my flannelette nightdress, the one Bertie had given me before he last went to France, I wrapped myself in my dressing gown and grabbed my wash-bag.

A meagre towel had been left on the bed, by Dora I assumed, so I rolled my underwear inside it and tucked it under my arm. Fearing any embarrassing meetings on the landing, I slipped noiselessly down the corridor to the bathroom.

Eventually, my washing hanging to dry overnight on Bertie’s old chair, I lifted the eiderdown and sheets of his bed and slipped my feet down towards the end. The sheets were cold and slightly damp. I pulled the blanket and top quilt over me but they gave no tangible warmth.

I had an idea.

Getting out of bed, I went to the wardrobe. Bertie’s coat slid easily off its hanger. I laid it on top of the bed and slipped under the sheets once more. That was better. I pulled his coat right under my chin. He had worn this coat when we’d got tickets for a recital at the Wigmore Hall. Was it Beethoven or Bach? I couldn’t be certain. But I remembered clearly how we had returned to Ealing and made love to keep warm.

I pulled my right hand from the growing warmth of the sheets and reached for the pockets of the coat. My fingers closed around a piece of almost furry paper. I pulled it out. The ticket to Wigmore Hall. I held it tightly in my grip then kissed it. His fingers had been the last to touch it. I held it a few moments longer then slid it under my pillow.

Blowing out my bedside candle, I could see the black night beyond the window. I had forgotten to pull the curtains and was too weary to get out of bed and close them now. I lay wide-eyed, watching a patch of thin cloud moving across the weak glow of a waning moon.

Could Bertie see me now? Could his spirit be in this room watching me?

If he was lying by me now, he would laugh at the absurdity of the two of us in his narrow bed. His coat keeping us warm. The ticket under our pillow. Everything. He was always laughing. He would hold me gently, passing his blood warmth to me and simply loving me.

I dreamt that night that we were back in our little nest in Ealing. I had been pickling onions in our tiny kitchen. It must have been Christmas because I had Christmas cards on the table and a small tree with red-ribboned bows and a robin on the top. The onions were the ones that Bertie had planted before he went to France the last time and this jar was to be his Christmas present.

I was washing up and looking out at our tiny patch of garden. I had used too much detergent and the bubbles were floating free past my eyes, but when I looked again the bubbles were turning into snow and in the garden white flakes were swirling, and standing in the middle of it all was Bertie. He had his big coat on and the bright green scarf I had knitted for him. He was smiling and waving at me, wanting me to join him. I opened the door and ran to where he had been standing but he wasn’t there. A snowman, wearing the green scarf, was in his place. A snowball hit the back of my neck, and as I turned I saw Bertie again. Now he was indoors. I ran back, the snowball dripping down my back, and collected up a handful of snow to throw at him. He was in the lounge sprinkling snow onto our little tree. I went to him and put my arms around him. ‘The war is over,’ he told me. ‘I am home.’

We held each other and the bliss and joy and love I felt in that moment was like no other. It was real and ethereal in one. To say it felt like heaven sounds glib, but truly I felt that angels were with us. His tears and mine were created by a greater power I now knew existed. ‘The war is over. I am home,’ he said again.

I held him tighter but he was no longer solid. The body beneath his coat was slipping away, like mist. I didn’t want to open my eyes to see him gone but I did and saw his coat slip from my arms, empty. He had gone.

I woke up in a terror. He was dead. Bertie was dead.

I had known very little of love before Bertie.

I had been born in Ospringe, Kent. My grandfather had been the closest person to me. He had at least cared about me. Given me some pride in myself. When he died and there was no one else to remember where I came from, I began to change. The one dingy room we shared, in an overcrowded almshouse, was stinking and had a family of rats nesting under his old straw-filled pallet. On the day the gravediggers slid him out of his pauper’s coffin, the foot end hinged so that the box could be reused again and again, I stood by his graveside and swore I would have a better life. I went back to that room and dragged his bed, the rats scattering and squealing, out into the field in front and set fire to it. I cleared the entire room. Watching as the flames engulfed my old life. All I had were the clothes I stood in, a small broken piece of mirror that Grandfather had found on the village tip, a pair of old boots, an empty room and my wits. There were two children in the almshouse. One aged three, one five. Their mother was pregnant again and I knew she needed some extra space. I also knew she could pay me a few pennies if I kept her children in my room. Over the next weeks and months I saved as much as I could, waiting for the chance that I felt certain life would throw at me.

I had a plan. I would deliberately cut off my old life before it stained me irrevocably. I knew what it was like to be one step away from the workhouse, my mother dead of consumption, my father a drunken sot, my grandfather keeping us out of the poorhouse, picking hops and apples every Kentish summer before dying a wretched death of lung disease after years of winters toiling in the cement works.

I would erase my poverty and lowness of birth. Rewrite my history.

And, I couldn’t have chosen a better time.

On 4 August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. Men of fighting age were leaving their work – on the land, in the mines, in offices, in factories – and were signing up to enlist. Suddenly employers needed women to man (as it were) the tractors, conveyor belts and desks of British industry.

I had belief in myself. An innate confidence. I could read and write, thanks to my grandfather. My numeracy was nimble enough from keeping score in the cribbage games played with him in the old pub. My clothes had been rags, but I took one of my mother’s old skirts and a blouse and, with some nifty stitching and darning, made them presentable enough. I took care of my skin as well as I could, and brushed my brown curls with a scrubbing brush, as my mother had taught me.

Back then, I wasn’t sure what I was preparing for, but whatever it was it would require me to be smart, bright and pretty. I was certain of it.

The fifteenth of September 1914 was the day Clara Carter, orphan of Ospringe parish, became Miss Clara Carter, trainee typist at the London Evening News, in Fleet Street, London.

The News, as it was known, had acquired a reputation for employing women. The shortage of manpower created by the surge of men wanting to enlist to serve in the war meant that women were prepared and wanting to work. What the newspaper knew, and found attractive, was that they didn’t have to pay female workers as much as their male counterparts. Board members must have rubbed their hands in glee at the prospect. War meant profit. Newspaper sales were up. Wage bills down.

I only discovered this by chance when taking the half-hour walk from Ospringe to my small cleaning job in Faversham.

Miss Hampton’s Haberdashery on the High Street was small but busy, supplying all kinds of fabric from seductive satins that fell down in ripples, to tough tweeds, scratchy but windproof. Miss Hampton was a respectable unmarried woman, probably in her late thirties or early forties. I felt quite sorry for her. A lifetime as a lonely old spinster couldn’t be much fun, but then when I saw how happy she was, doting on her customers and deciding for herself what she would have for supper, and when or even if she would have it, I rather envied her.

Each week I arrived just before she opened up for the day, to clean the shop, the storeroom, her kitchen-cum-parlour and her small, feminine bedroom.

That morning, I had found on my journey a copy of the previous day’s Evening News. I picked it up for no other reason than to practise my reading and use it later for the fire at home.

Miss Hampton spotted it immediately. ‘Good morning Miss Carter, I didn’t know you’d taken to reading the news.’

‘I found it. I’ve never really read one before and I thought it might be interesting. About the war and everything.’

‘Good for you,’ Miss Hampton said, ‘You could read it to me over lunch if you like?’

‘Thank you. I would like that.’

‘Excellent. We women need to keep up with what’s going on in the world. It’s our duty to understand what is being done in our name.’

Miss Hampton was a suffragette. She didn’t know I knew. Suffragettes in our part of the world kept their beliefs quiet. Most men and many women thought they were mannish troublemakers. So, when I found a brooch in Miss Hampton’s dressing-table drawer, a circle of purple, green and white stones, the suffragettes’ colours, I knew what she was. I admired her, and if she wanted it to be kept a secret, no one would hear it from me.

Miss Hampton carried on. ‘As women we must stay strong. Keep the home fires burning. Remind those poor devils who are facing the enemy that there is still an England to return to.’ She folded the paper and tucked it under the counter. ‘And we’ll start with you getting the shop swept.’

I loved my days in the shop with Miss Hampton. For a starter, I stayed clean all day. The bolts of fabric always needed sorting and measuring. The ribbons rolling. The buttons counting.

At first, when customers came into the shop, Miss Hampton expected me to disappear and get on with the work in the rest of her home. But a few months back she had asked me if I would like to take home an offcut of soft grey wool and make it into a garment that I could wear at work. She didn’t have to explain that my mother’s old skirt and blouse were far from decent. I made a simple dress with a neat neckline, bracelet-length sleeves and a neat-fitting bodice and skirt that accentuated my thin frame. I wore it to work every day from then on. As soon as I had finished my cleaning duties, I was allowed to be Miss Hampton’s assistant to the customers.

Today, after I had the back room in good order and the bolts of fabric lying neatly on their shelves, it was time for our simple lunch. Miss Hampton locked the door at exactly one p.m. every day and I could hear her doing so as I ran water from the pump at the sink, filled the kettle and lit the hob.

‘Now Miss Carter,’ Miss Hampton arrived in the back room and glanced around to make sure all was shipshape, ‘did you have breakfast?’

‘Not yet, ma’am. My grandfather cooked a mutton stew last night so I wasn’t hungry.’ I lied convincingly but Miss Hampton, although never revealing so, knew very well that there had been no mutton stew and that my grandfather lay now in an unmarked pauper’s grave.

‘Perhaps you could manage a little bread and ham? I made the bread last night.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. I would.’

‘You’ll find it all in the larder. We’ll eat it at the table here.’

‘May I get the newspaper?’ I asked politely.

Miss Hampton was gathering plates and cutlery. ‘Please do.’

The tea was made, and the food set out quickly and neatly.

I was always thankful for these simple lunches. Not only was it good food, but watching Miss Hampton, the cutlery she used and the delicate way she ate and drank, was a valuable lesson in manners. I also studied the way Miss Hampton spoke and tried my best to imitate her soft voice and accuracy of speech.

Taking her last mouthful of bread and dabbing crumbs from her mouth with a napkin, Miss Hampton placed her knife and fork in the middle of her empty plate and picked up my copy of the Evening News. There were many pages of war news, but she hurried through them, muttering ‘Dear God’ and ‘Unbearable’, before stopping at an advertisement showing the latest ladies’ fashion styles. ‘Skirts are getting short.’ She raised her eyebrows, ‘In my day you would never show your ankles. I still don’t.’

‘May I see?’ I asked.

The advertisement read: ‘The new workwear for young women’. The two models were wearing quite different outfits. One a neat, peplum-waisted jacket with a companion narrow skirt, the other posing in a floaty, floral tea dress. ‘Ideal office wear for any season,’ I said. ‘I like them.’

Miss Hampton got up and collected the lunch dishes to take them to the kitchen.

I turned a few more pages of the paper and came to the Situations Vacant column.

THE LONDON EVENING NEWS NEEDS YOU.

Are you a young woman prepared to do essential war work?

Be part of our ground-breaking News Team and become a typist.

Full training, board and lodging available.

Applications in writing to:

The London Evening News

Fleet Street

London

This was the sign I had been waiting for. The moment I had been preparing for.

A job in London with board and lodging, a skill to learn and a wage to be had.

I jumped up and ran to Miss Hampton who was drying a plate. ‘Miss Hampton, ma’am, can you help me write a letter?’

I haunted the village post office for days waiting for a reply and then it arrived.

Dear Miss Carter,

Thank you for your letter of 17 August.

We should like to offer you a position on the London Evening News as a trainee typist.

We can offer a room in a nearby boarding house where many of our female employees live. The rent is deducted directly from your wage.

Assuming all this is in order, we look forward with pleasure to your suggested arrival on 15 September next.

I remain yours sincerely,

Miss Anita Flint,

Office Manager

Miss Hampton had been almost more excited than me.

‘You’ll need clothes.’

I looked down at my grey wool dress. ‘What’s wrong with this?’

Miss Hampton inclined her head. ‘Well, shall we be reminded that fine feathers make fine birds? And being so thin you don’t take much fabric.’ She unrolled her tape measure. ‘Stand still.’

Out of shop hours, Miss Hampton and I picked out old remnants of fabric, and between us we sewed two dresses, one work suit and two blouses.

‘That should do you if you take care of them. Now what about your footwear?’ Miss Hampton asked.

‘I’ll polish these boots up.’ I looked at my scuffed and thin-soled shoes. ‘They’ll be fine.’

Miss Hampton sighed, ‘They are worn through. No, no. Let me see what I have in the back.’

It turned out that Miss Hampton’s shoes were a pretty good fit, although my feet were a little thinner.

‘Wear thicker stockings to pack them out a bit.’ Her eyebrows twitched. ‘You don’t have stockings, do you?’

I was embarrassed. ‘No. Just these long socks.’ I hitched up my skirt for her to see.

‘Oh dear.’ She rubbed her chin. ‘What about personal items of underwear?’

I reddened and shook my head.

Miss Hampton smiled. ‘Dear me. You are a regular Cinderella, aren’t you? You are lucky to have me.’

Miss Hampton kitted me out with all that she thought a young woman should need when starting a new job in a new city. Not only that, she also let me use her tin bathtub. The first hot, soapy bath I had ever had.

On the morning of my departure for London, I crept out of my shared room, leaving the two children snoring and a note for their mum – if she could read – and took the walk to Miss Hampton’s.

Miss Hampton had my travelling clothes hanging up in her back room, with all my other garments packed into a small case she had bought for me.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ I said as I stood and looked at myself in her mirror.

‘Oh,’ Miss Hampton coughed, hiding her emotion, ‘it’s been fun. I’ve enjoyed it.’

I spun around in a full circle, checking my appearance from every angle. ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’

Miss Hampton pursed her lips and was quiet for a moment. ‘I believe in you. You have a strength of character that will get you through life’s challenges. And if you need any help, you know where I am.’ Her voice was kind and meaningful. ‘Now then. You’ve got everything?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t forget to clean your nails every day and brush your hair well.’

‘I won’t.’

‘And clean your teeth. And write. Please. I want to know how you are.’

‘I’ll type you a letter,’ I told her.

‘Ah yes. Very good.’ Miss Hampton began patting her sides in agitation. ‘I suppose we should embrace or something.’

I laughed as I hugged my mentor, and kissed her on her soft cheek. ‘I will never forget you, ma’am.’

‘Likewise.’ Miss Hampton sniffed.

Miss Hampton watched me as I climbed up on the farm wagon that was ordered and waiting to take me on the first leg of my journey out of Kent.

‘Bye Miss Hampton,’ I waved as the cart began to move.

‘Goodbye!’ She waved in return.

I never looked back.

‘Where’re you going then?’ asked the young cart driver, flicking his reins.

‘London.’ I smiled. I had done it. I had escaped. ‘Do you know it?’

‘Maybe, one day.’ He held out an arm and caught a dry stalk of grass from the hedgerow. He put it between his lips, rolling it from side to side for a while.

‘Know London, do you?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’ I didn’t feel as if I were lying. This was the new Miss Clara Carter, after all. I tried another one. ‘I was born there.’

He flicked a look at me, still chewing the piece of grass. Then said, ‘I’m enlisting. Going to France. My brothers are out there.’

I narrowed my eyes, ‘How old are you?’

‘Nearly eighteen.’

I laughed. ‘You’re sixteen if you’re a day.’

‘Well, how old are you then?’

‘It’s very rude to ask a lady’s age.’

‘I wouldn’t ask a lady.’

‘Oi. Cheeky.’ I folded my arms and sniffed. ‘I’m eighteen, if you must know.’

The barrier was broken.

We continued chatting and joshing each other until he stopped the cart and let me down. ‘Your next one is over there.’ He pointed at a smart wagon pulled by two horses. ‘He’s a bit dearer’n me.’

I pulled a penny from my pocket and gave it to him.

‘I only want a ha’pence,’ he said.

‘Well, if you don’t want it?’ I said loftily, holding out my hand for the change.

‘No. You’re all right.’ He pocketed it.

‘Keep it for luck then,’ I told him. ‘If you ever get to France, you might need some luck.’

He handed me down my bag. ‘Good luck in London,’ he said. ‘I reckon you’ll need it more than me.’

It was evening by the time I arrived in Southwark. I had slept most of the journey, waking only as the deep mud ruts of the Old Kent Road jiggled the sleep from my head.

The driver took my bag down for me, and I showed him the carefully folded piece of paper I had kept in my pocket. ‘Do you happen to know where this might be; it’s the address of a lodging house just off Fleet Street?’

The man gave me directions to cross the river and ask again.

Forty minutes later, I found the building I was looking for. Georgian, tall, thin and well proportioned, with square-paned windows and a black front door, over which was painted the words: ‘The Fleet Women’s Dwelling’.

My new home.

Chapter Five
Bertie, Penang, Malaya
28 July 1914

Penang is a world away from the boredom of home. I have never missed my life in the Cornish vicarage with my hypochondriac mother and bitter sister. The only one I truly miss is Pa. The most forgiving and unjudgemental man. I am blessed to have him as a parent. I miss my younger brother Ernest too, of course. He and I have been very close but not so much over the last five years. Sibling rivalry got between us, as it does in many families. I am jealous of the way he winds Ma around his little finger, and he is jealous of me because Pa backed this adventure to Malaya all the way.

I can’t tell you how thrilling it was to wave Callyzion, my mother and my sister goodbye and board the ship at Tilbury Docks to steam south for the Orient.

I was still only twenty-four and had been lured to Penang by the father of a chum I knew from Cambridge. He owned a rubber plantation there and was having trouble finding someone who would be willing to spend a couple of years, away from family and Blighty, looking after it. As it was, I couldn’t wait to get away, so when he offered me a decent wage, a share of the business and my passage paid, how could I refuse?

It took six weeks on the boat from Tilbury.

Six wonderful weeks where I flirted with the young female passengers and played endless bridge, supplementing my meagre income most satisfactorily.

I have been here for two years now and have settled in well. The workers, mostly Malay or Indian, respect me, and in return I look after them well, seeing to their medical and domestic needs, within reason.

I was beginning to think I might never return to England. Everything I needed was here. Sun, sea, a good life and good society with the ex-pat community. But, as my father was fond of saying, ‘Man plans and God laughs.’

God’s laughter began one day as I was walking the plantation and checking the taps on the rubber trees. I saw my foreman, Nizam, running through the serried ranks of silver trunks towards me. It was a hot afternoon, and being the monsoon season, the jungle floor was steaming from a recent heavy downpour.

‘Slow down, Nizam. It’s too hot to run,’ I shouted to him. In response he waved a buff piece of paper in his hand. ‘Sahib!’ he managed. ‘Important telegram for you. From England.’

Oh God, I thought, what the hell has happened? My mind went straight to my parents. Was father ill? Had mother had another of her funny turns?

Nizam reached me, panting hard. ‘Sahib, the telegram boy say urgent at once.’

He handed me the envelope and then bent double, hands on knees, to catch his breath.

My name, Herbert Bolitho, and my address, Batu Rubber Plantation, were written in a pencilled scrawl.

Nizam, breathing less heavily now, was looking at me, waiting for me to read the message.

I did not oblige him. ‘Would you run up to the house and get some tiffin ready, Nizam? I’ll be there shortly.’

I could see the disappointment in his eyes. Excitement of any kind, especially from thousands of miles away, was to be shared, but trust him though I did, gossip spread, which is why I spoke Malay at work and English only with the other English planters. We made sure the staff never learnt our language.

I opened the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper. The same grey scrawl wrote:

AUSTRIA*HUNGARY*DECLARE*WAR*ON* GERMANY*STOP*FATHER

My father’s usual brevity. Telegrams were paid for by the word. His living in the church paid very little so this extravagance was against his nature. He really must be worried.

I could have run back to the house and despatched my own telegram there and then, but I decided instead to finish the job I was doing; checking the trees for their rubber production and marking those that needed to come out. I had twenty acres of them and ninety estate workers. It was a decent living for them, but the system was beset with corruption and fraud. I tried very hard to be a good ‘protector’, as my position was known.

So why had my father sent me a telegram? Did he expect me to come home? Was England going to be drawn into this war? And if we did, would I do the right thing? Did he want me to enlist? Face the enemy and get killed in a pointless war?

I stood under the canopy of my trees and weighed up my options. The truth was that if I booked a boat home tomorrow, the chances were that the war would be over by the time I got there. Then I’d have to turn around and return to the plantation, to find it abandoned by its workers and overrun with rats and monkeys.

I worked for a further hour or so – the trees were in very good stead – and returned for tiffin. The small feast of tea and cherry cake looked delicious, but I headed for a stiff cocktail instead.

I didn’t send a telegram that day. I waited to see if the threat of war was real or if my father had overreacted. I heard nothing further, so a few days later I got up early while it was still cool and strolled into town.

The only place to get reasonably accurate information was in the bar of the splendid Eastern and Oriental Hotel in George Town.

The fans on the shaded veranda wafted the early heat around, giving some respite to those customers who were breakfasting outside.

I lifted my hat to them, ‘Morning.’

‘Good morning.’

I bounced up the steps into the bar and handed my Panama to one of the several bar boys. ‘Good morning, sahib,’ they chanted with toothy grins.

‘Good morning, boys. My usual breakfast please.’ I headed to my preferred table.

I settled to watch the street market below and to view the ships in the harbour. Two warships were docked. One British. I felt a small stirring of unease. Good or bad news?

The arrival of my scrambled eggs and mango juice, with a pot of tea, chased thoughts of the presence of Royal Navy warships from my mind.

‘Bolitho, old man.’ I looked up.

‘Duncan. Come and join me.’ Duncan was protector of a much larger plantation a couple of miles from mine.

His Scottish accent rich and rolling. ‘Have you had news from home?’

‘About the war? Yes. My father sent a telegram.’

‘I had one last night. My father reckons we’ll have to step in, the German government haven’t responded to us telling them not to take Belgium or else.’

‘Oh God.’

‘Aye, quite so.’ Duncan pushed his thick spectacles further onto his nose and turned his attention to the waiting bar boy. ‘I’ll have the same as Mr Bolitho but add a large glass of Scottish whisky to the order.’ The bar boy nodded smartly and despatched himself to the kitchen.

‘So,’ Duncan said in a quieter tone, ‘what do you think it’ll all mean?’

‘The war? God knows. It seems all very foolhardy. What happened to diplomacy and peace at all costs?’

‘You get a couple of madmen sabre-rattling and the monkey is out of its cage,’ Duncan replied. He frowned at the tablecloth and then, lifting his eyes, asked me, ‘Would you go home?’

‘You mean enlist?’

‘Aye.’

I finished the last mouthful of my eggs and pushed myself out from the table, crossing my legs in what I hoped was a casual and relaxed move. ‘Well now. I’m entirely unsure. Are you?’

‘It would be the right thing to do if we were needed.’ He swept his hand across his large ginger moustache.

I had been afraid he might play the ‘right thing’ card. I lit a cigarette as if I were considering his answer. ‘Yes, there is that, but for God’s sake, the whole ballyhoo will be over by the time we get home. Surely?’ I fervently hoped this would be true.

‘Will it?’ His eyes looked into mine, searching for some reassurance. I looked away and down at the busy market, blowing two smoke rings to puncture the tension surrounding us.

‘I don’t honestly know,’ I said. ‘But look here, wouldn’t we be better off staying? Surely if we continue to keep our plantations supplying rubber for boots, tents, mackintoshes …’ I was ticking them on my fingers, ‘all those things badly needed in wartime, wouldn’t that be better?’

‘Mebbe.’

I was grateful when the bar boy appeared with Duncan’s breakfast. Political debate on an empty stomach is never a good thing. I stubbed out my cigarette, lit another, and asked the boy for two large whiskies.

When they came Duncan and I raised our tumblers. ‘To us,’ Duncan intoned.

He ate and I drank in silence. The food was always good here and the tea excellent, but the Scotch was better. I felt it hit my bloodstream without apology.

‘Anyway,’ I gestured with my glass, ‘how the hell do we know if any of this is true? It may be rumour. The folks at home may be the victims of scaremongering by—’

‘By who? The Germans? The Russians? The French?’ grunted Duncan. He wiped his moustache and said quietly, ‘But what if it isn’t?’

We sat in tipsy, silent gloom.

I stared out to the harbour. ‘There seem to be warships in,’ I said after a while.

‘Saw them this morning,’ Duncan replied. ‘One British, the other French, I think.’

‘Is it? Resupplying, I suppose,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ Duncan drained his glass. ‘Want another?’

I held out my glass and the bar boy rushed forwards, knowing what we wanted before we asked.

‘The thing is,’ said Duncan, watching the boy run to his errand. ‘The German Navy is technologically superior to ours and is said to be spreading itself around harbours of importance.’

I snorted, ‘Since when the bloody hell has George Town been a harbour of importance?’

‘It’s close to Singapore. Too close to Singapore for comfort.’

‘Well why don’t they bugger off to Singapore then?’

Duncan, who could take his drink better than me, said simply: ‘Take George Town, you can take Singapore.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘They can’t just come in here and take over. We are a British Crown Colony.’

‘Exactly.’

A creeping realisation stirred in me. ‘Bloody hell.’

‘Indeed.’

I sat toying with my drink and thinking.

Duncan was the first to speak. ‘Which service do you fancy? Army, Navy or the Flying Corps?’

‘If it comes to it, I suppose the Army. It’s what my father would want. His father fought in Crimea. You?’

‘Same. My mother’s grandfather was killed in 1814 in America. He’s a kind of hero in our family. One we all have to look up to, even though we never knew him. When we were small and had done something wrong, my mother would tell us that the ghost of Grandfather Ewan would haunt us all our days. She said he despised naughty children and loathed cowardice. It has been an enormous weight to live up to.’

‘Good God.’

‘Something like that.’

We had another large Scotch each and changed the conversation to the general gossip of employees, the price of rubber, and when we’d next have dinner together.

After an hour or so I looked at my watch. ‘Better get back, I suppose.’

‘Aye, I’d better go to the telegraph office and send a reply to my father.’

We said our goodbyes. Duncan plodded off into town and I strolled down to the harbour to check out the warships.

I was stalling for time. I wanted to stay where I was. I loved the plantation and enjoyed the company of the workers who relied on me. They were almost like family.

It was on the evening of 4 August when my hand was forced. Duncan and I and a couple of friends had spent a convivial evening at the Eastern and Oriental. The squabbles in Europe seemed a long way away. We were buoyed up by cocktails, convinced that our lives would remain uninterrupted. Smoking fine cigars on the veranda under a starry night, any war felt impossible. I was in a hibiscus-scented tropical heaven far, far away from any reality back home.

As I looked down on the street below, I heard, then saw Nizam pelting towards us. ‘Nizam!’ I shouted. ‘What the hell are you doing out this late? Has something happened on the plantation?’ My biggest fear was fire.

Gasping at his exertion, Nizam came to a stop below the hotel balcony. ‘Telegram for you.’ He panted. ‘Urgent.’

‘Come up here and give it to me, then.’ And on a whim, I shouted down, ‘I’ll get you a drink, old boy.’

A minute later he was standing awkwardly next to me. A bar boy returned with a tray carrying an ice-cold beer. Nizam hesitated. ‘May I take, sahib?’

‘Of course. You need it.’

Duncan murmured to me in his deep Scottish brogue, ‘Servants are not allowed to be served in the hotel, old boy.’

‘For God’s sake.’ I took the bottle from the tray and handed it to Nizam. ‘There, now I have served the beer. Blame me.’

The bar boy looked at me with fear. ‘Sahib. I will lose my job.’

‘I will make sure you don’t. Now leave us, and Nizam, drink that bloody beer.’

Nizam handed me the envelope and gratefully gulped the drink.

Opening the telegram I read:

ENGLAND*AT*WAR*WITH*GERMANY*STOP*FATHER.

I handed the envelope to Duncan and the other pals.

We looked at each other, each silently asking ourselves the unbearable question. Should we go home?

I returned to England nine months later. It was not cowardice that prevented me from going home earlier. My mind was made up way before I witnessed the terrible sinking of an Imperial Russian Navy cruiser and a French destroyer in George Town harbour. A German cruiser had masqueraded as a British naval ship and torpedoed them both; the war was on my doorstep all these miles from home.

I booked my passage home in the early May of 1915. Not on an ocean liner but a spice boat, taking her cargo to Tilbury Docks.

Six fraught weeks at sea followed. The crew were constantly on the lookout for German hunter boats and cruisers. Mines were a fresh threat and the captain received daily, sometimes hourly, radio messages with information on where the enemy lay and how to avoid them. To calm our nerves, I taught many of the crew to play bridge. The Chinese who ran the ship’s laundry – the dhobi-wallahs – were keen gamblers, and I quickly learnt not to bet more than a few shillings when playing them.

We were due to dock early on a Friday morning and I was up before the sun. My things were mostly packed and, after a quick shave, I bade my farewell to the cramped cabin that had been my home. I went up on deck and waited for the white cliffs of Dover to appear like spectres on the horizon. I surprised myself with the emotion I experienced when they finally materialised from the early gloom. It was not yet seven o’clock in the morning but I was ready to come home.

From Tilbury, I took the train to Victoria Station, which was crowded. I noticed that there were four distinct groups.

Men and women in civvies, going about their day.

Young men, proudly clothed in unsullied uniforms. Smiling. Eager to join their units.

The returning men, wounded, with the mud of France still on their boots, their bandaged heads and arms bloodied, crutches under their armpits, sharing cigarettes, struck dumb by the horror they had left behind.

And finally, women. Wan with waiting. Staring at each and every man in the hope that one of them was theirs.

I left Victoria and walked the short distance to present myself at 59 Buckingham Gate, London. The headquarters of the First Battalion of the London Scottish Regiment. As a proud Scot, Duncan had joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in Stirling, and I promised to join its equivalent in London.

After giving my name to a recruiting officer, receiving a medical test (sight, height and hearing), I was equipped for active service, and embodied there and then.

I was Private number 4192.

Caroline
Present day

I opened the small discoloured brown envelope and shook out the little key.

The clasps on the trunk were cold to the touch as I turned the key in each of the two locks.

The right one was stiff and took a little time before yielding. The left one turned as if new.

Placing the key on the floor, I put my thumbs on both of the clasps and pushed them down and away. I felt the mechanism of the lock click and then release. The clasps sprang up and open and with a deep breath I lifted the lid slowly. The smell of camphor and old books rose from within and there, on top of everything was a khaki army jacket.

Bertie, Callyzion, Cornwall
June 1915

Ernest was waiting for me at Bodmin Road station.

‘Hello, old chap, or don’t you speak English any more?’ He playfully punched my arm and took one of my bags, swinging it over his shoulder.

I rubbed my arm. ‘Still got your superb sense of humour, I see.’

‘I’ve got the old jalopy outside. She’s a bit of a goer actually.’ He set off towards the station exit.

‘Don’t tell me Pa bought you a car?’

‘Sadly not. Mum didn’t want me going off to join the Army, so I had to find a job.’

‘A job? Do students work?’ I joked.

‘I graduated with a First in English actually. Better than you anyway.’ He sidestepped my attempt to swipe him.

‘Congratulations. So where are you working?’

‘With old Mr Sands.’

‘He must be ninety.’ I thought of him servicing our bicycles when we were boys; he’d seemed old even then. ‘Is his workshop still going?’

‘Rather. His two sons-in-law have spruced the old place up a bit. Doing very well. Sell rather snazzy motors on the forecourt. They have even installed a petrol pump.’

‘I see, so you’re a car salesman, are you?’

‘Not yet. The sons-in-law do that. No, I’m in the workshop, servicing lawnmowers. I sometimes get my hands on a car engine. It keeps me out of the house, and Mother happy.’

‘Excellent.’

‘And occasionally I am allowed to borrow the odd motor.’ He stopped and pointed at a tiny red car with a canvas roof. ‘There she is.’

I gave a low whistle. ‘Smart.’

We stashed my bags on the tiny back seat and folded ourselves into the cramped interior.

‘Fancy a pint before facing the parents?’ he asked as he got the engine running.

‘I have been dreaming of one,’ I answered happily.

‘Right then. Off we go.’

With a clash of gears and a honk of the horn, we left the station and got out onto the lane towards Newquay and Callyzion. ‘The Rifle Volunteer do you?’ he shouted above the noise.

I answered him with a thumbs up and settled back to watch the landscape of home unfold ahead of us.

In The Rifle Volunteer, Ernest got the first pints in and brought them to the quiet table in the nook by the fire.

‘Cheers.’ We solemnly raised our glasses and drank. Wiping his lips with the back of his hand he said, ‘Mother can’t wait to get you back in her clutches. How are you at winding wool?’

‘As bad as I ever was,’ I laughed. ‘The thing is, Ernie …’ I began, but he talked over me.

‘While you have been away, Bertie, I have been stuck here. And I don’t resent you having the chance of freedom and independence, but while you’ve been doing that, I have been busy being the dutiful son.’

I took another mouthful of my pint. I had a feeling I knew what was coming next and I wasn’t wrong.

‘The thing is,’ Ernest continued, ‘I am twenty-two and it’s my turn to get out of Cornwall and see the world.’

‘I understand that,’ I said.

‘Good. Because it’s your turn to be the good son. I’m off to fight in France.’

I thought of the war papers in my pocket. ‘Really? Ah well, that’s a bit awkward, because I enlisted this morning.’

His face turned from unwelcome surprise to anger. ‘No. I’m the one going to France. I signed up last week. I have my papers at home.’

‘I have my papers right here.’ I tapped my top pocket.

‘But I enlisted a week before you.’

‘Makes no odds. Neither of us can back out now.’

‘You selfish bastard.’ He looked at the stained yellow ceiling and sighed. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘We are going to have to tell them.’ We laughed, I realise now quite cruelly, and said, ‘They’ll still have Amy.’

At the top of our lane, Ernest turned the engine off and quietly rolled the absurd little car to the vicarage. It was now very late, and all around us the houses lay in respectable darkness, their owners sleeping soundly.

I had my old house key on my watch chain and opened the door to the hall as Ernest brought my luggage in.

‘Sssh.’ He put his index finger to his lips and promptly kicked the front door closed behind him, making an almighty bang. We stood like naughty boys, shaking with silent, terrified laughter, waiting for our father to come to the top of the stairs and tick us off. But no sound came from upstairs.

‘Fancy another beer?’ Ernest whispered.

‘Prefer a Scotch,’ I whispered back.

He put my case down by the old hat stand and beckoned me to follow him into Father’s study.

I shut the door behind me, very gently, whilst Ernest fumbled in the dark for a match to light the old oil lamp that had been on Father’s desk for as long as I could remember. Ernest got it going and turned the wick up. At once the cherished room, with all its memories, lay before me as if I had never left.

Nothing had changed. The worn leather chair by the fire. The rag rug Mother had made one Christmas with the scorch marks of a hundred wood spits dotting it.

The curtains were drawn shut, keeping out the night and the draught that always seeped through the old sash windows.

In this room I had received my (un)fair share of whacks on my palm from my father’s ruler. It was also where I had been told, with some relief, that I had a place at Cambridge to read Classics. And, it was where I had brought my mother to tears, announcing that I was off to Malaya to make my fortune.

I had never expected to see the familiar yards of books on the shelves again, or the inkstand with the fountain pen that Father had received from his parents when he was ordained, and the family photo. All five of us. Mother tiny, Amy very tall and angular, me in my old school uniform and Ernest stiff and unsmiling, wearing short trousers, leaning on Father who was sitting on his chair. His throne.

‘My God. Nothing has changed.’ I settled myself by the fire. Ernest, who’d been searching the bookshelves, finally found a bottle of good malt between Flora and Fauna of the British Isles and The Free Church Year Book, 1912 edition.

‘Get that down you.’ He chinked my glass. ‘Welcome home, big brother.’

‘Cheers.’ I raised my glass to him then drank.

He settled himself opposite me and we sat, easy in each other’s company, neither of us feeling the need to speak.

The Scotch was instantly relaxing and I closed my eyes. I was home.

Quite suddenly my mother burst through the door. ‘Oh my darling, Bertie!’ She was standing before me in her nightdress and shawl, shaking off the restraining hand of my father. ‘Ernest.’ She pointed at him. ‘How could you not have woken us?’

‘I didn’t know you wanted to be woken.’ Ernest shrugged.

My father said quietly, ‘The boys have a lot to talk about, I expect.’

I stood up immediately, and put the glass down. ‘Darling, Mother.’ I embraced her. ‘You look wonderful.’

She kissed my cheek and held me away from her. ‘Home for the summer! But you’re too thin. All that rice and all those spices. Cook will make you some good English food tomorrow. How about shepherd’s pie? We can still get good mutton.’

‘My favourite! And how is dear Cook?’

My mother pursed her lips. ‘Just the same. Always complaining. Amy deals with her now although how she manages her, I don’t know. Constant complaints about the stairs and her bad knees and her kitchen budget.’

My father stopped her flow. ‘My dear, Bertie doesn’t want to hear about all that just now.’ He had gained a little weight and maybe his beard was a little longer, but my father’s comforting bulk made me want to hold him, press my face against him and inhale the soothing smell of him. I resisted the impulse and held out my hand to shake his. He winked at me. ‘Good to see you, boy. Welcome home.’ He turned to Ernest with a playful smile, ‘And put that bottle away now.’

Ernie produced the whisky from where he’d stuck it behind his back and handed it to my father’s outstretched hand. He checked to see how much we had taken.

‘Hmm. Still plenty left. We can share it tomorrow, boys, after dinner.’

My mother said peevishly, ‘I can’t wait until tomorrow. I want to hear all Bertie’s news now.’

‘My dear Louisa,’ my father said. ‘The boy needs some sleep. There’s plenty of time for his news now that he’s home for good.’ He looked at me. ‘Isn’t that right, son?’

I saw Ernest’s eyes flick towards mine. I kept my gaze set on my father. ‘I’m sure we have a lot of news to share. Don’t we, Ernest?’

Chapter Six
Herbert, Callyzion, the calm before the storm
June 1915

‘Give Bertie more sausages, Amy,’ my mother ordered from her seat at the breakfast table. ‘He needs some proper food.’

Amy got up without smiling, took my plate and went to the sideboard where Cook and Dora, our maid, had laid a feast of eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes and mushrooms. ‘How many do you want?’ Amy asked with her back to me, her shoulders set. ‘I know that Cook was wanting the leftovers for tomorrow’s casserole.’

‘Amy!’ My mother’s response was harsh. ‘Cook will have to make something else for tomorrow.’

Amy returned my plate, now laden with sausages. As she sat down she said, ‘Oh yes, I had forgotten the fatted calf we have in the larder.’

Father gave her a stern look. ‘Gracelessness does not become you, Amy.’

I smiled at my little sister, ‘That’s OK. I’m not here to eat you out of house or home.’

She fiddled with the napkin on her lap. ‘I apologise, Bertie.’ She added, ‘It is good to have you back home.’

‘It’s good to be home.’ I meant it. ‘How have you been, Amy?’

She glanced at Mother who was buttering some toast. ‘Just the same,’ she said.

‘Any news on Peter?’ I asked as I sliced into a sausage.

She shook her head, eyes down.

‘Any idea where his battalion is?’

‘No.’

‘But he writes to you?’

She stood up, ‘Do excuse me, there’s something I have forgotten.’

When she’d gone, I looked around the table. ‘I feel I have said the wrong thing.’

My mother became very businesslike. ‘The truth is, she writes to him twice a week but hasn’t had a reply for six weeks. She scours the list of casualties in the papers every day, but there is no news.’

‘Then he must be OK.’ I tried to sound cheerful. ‘It must be awfully hard getting letters into or out of France given the circumstances.’

My father wiped his lips and beard with his napkin. ‘We can only pray.’ He stood up. ‘My dear, that was very nice. Thank Cook for me.’

‘Where are you going?’ my mother asked testily.

‘I am taking the boys into my study. We have a lot to discuss.’

‘Then I am coming too.’ My mother stood up.

My father held up a hand. ‘No, my dear.’

‘But I want to hear all you have to say. All Bertie’s news.’

‘And you shall, but first we have men’s things to discuss.’ He made for the door and signalled for Ernest and me to come with him.

The curtains had been pulled open and the June sun slanted onto the large desk where Father took his seat.

He motioned at us to take our seats. I took my cigarettes from my pocket and proffered one to Ernest. ‘Thanks, old man,’ he muttered, searching his pocket for a match.

‘Don’t let your mother catch you,’ Father growled, but his eyes gave us his tacit approval. He leant back in his chair, hands over his stomach, and looked at the ceiling. ‘I am assuming that both of you are going to France?’

Ernest flashed me a look of terror.

I put my cigarette to my lips and inhaled deeply.

Ernest had gone white.

‘Yes, Father. I joined up yesterday.’

His gaze remained on the ceiling. ‘The Army?’

‘Yes sir. London Scottish.’

‘Why?’

‘It was the nearest recruiting office to Victoria Station.’

‘And you joined up on a whim? Or for your country?’

I took a moment to think, stubbing out my cigarette and immediately lighting another. ‘I saw a German boat, masquerading as a British cruiser. It had put up a false funnel, of all things. It was only when the captain ran up the German flag that we realised what was happening. By then it was too late.’

I could still hear, smell and see the thrashing, doomed men, screaming as they burned. ‘It came into George Town harbour and I watched as it torpedoed a Russian vessel.’

‘What utter bastards,’ Ernest fumed.

‘May God have mercy on their souls,’ my father intoned.

I shifted in my chair and tried to make light of it. With a smile I said, ‘Well, you can imagine that after that I decided the Navy was not for me.’

Ernest sniggered but Father did not. I continued, ‘And I’m not one for heights so the Air Force would be no good.’ I finished, limply, ‘So, it had to be the Army.’

My father asked simply, ‘When do you go?’

‘Six days. Must turn up, you know, like the proverbial, at Abbotts Langley barracks for training.’

‘I see.’ He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘And you, Ernest?’

‘I have my teaching position at Oundle, as you know,’ he said shiftily.

‘I do know. But I also know that they are not expecting you until the war is over. That was what you wrote to tell them, wasn’t it?’

Ernest’s mouth fell open.

‘I am not a fool, Ernest,’ my father continued. ‘I would have done the same as a young man. Which regiment?’

‘Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry,’ Ernest said quietly.

My father continued with the rhythmic stroking of his beard. He watched us. We waited.

Eventually he sat up and placed his hands on his desk. ‘You are not to tell your mother,’ he said. ‘I want her to have the next few days without worry. When you both have to leave, and I suggest you leave at the same time, I will hand her the letters of explanation you will each have written to her. Do you understand?’

‘Yes sir,’ we replied in unison.

‘Now, not a word of this to anyone outside this room. For the next few days I expect you to be on your best behaviour and to demonstrate the affection you have for Amy and your mother. If anything should happen,’ he cleared his throat, ‘to either of you, in France, they shall have the best of recollections.’ He reached for his fountain pen and filled it slowly from his ink pot. ‘Now, my sons, I must ask you to leave to allow me to get on with my business.’

When we had closed the door of the study, and were standing in the hall, we heard our father praying for our safety. I know it nearly broke my heart.

Six days later, Ernest and I had done as our father had prescribed.

We had told our mother nothing, and had been the perfect sons. I mowed the lawn and mended the old swing under the apple tree. When all was done, I asked Dora to serve afternoon tea beneath the tree. My mother was persuaded to sit on the swing and I pushed her gently. She was so happy. Her sons at home, her daughter setting the tea table, her husband solid and kind. She sat on the swing giggling like a girl.

Then she said, ‘Oh, my dearest Bertie. It is so good to have you home. I am blessed to have such loving children.’ The guilt I felt then nearly floored me.

I felt, as I left my envelope next to Ernest’s on the hall table, a terrible coward. My father had prayed with us the night before and given us his and God’s blessing.

How on earth was he going to cope with my mother when she discovered how he, and we, had betrayed her? I could have stopped it there and then. Written to the War Office explaining that my parents needed me at home for the duration. But instead, I collected my coat and bag, and with Ernest in front of me, closed the front door and crept away.

We walked in silence to the crossroads where the bus to Bodmin stopped. While we waited there, I made some innocuous remark about the early mist rolling in. ‘It should burn off by mid-morning.’

Ernest looked skywards and sniffed like an old mariner. ‘Mmmh.’

The bus arrived and took us down winding lanes and up steep hills, collecting a straggle of early passengers. From our high seats we could get the odd glimpse of the sea through breaks in the hedge and the mist, before the vapour cloaked them again like a magic trick.

At last we dropped down into the heart of Bodmin town and, as we got off, the driver called out, ‘Good luck in France.’

‘Thank you,’ Ernest and I replied together.

I slammed the door and the driver put the clutch in, ground the bus’s gears into first and drove away.

‘Nice of him.’ I smiled at Ernest.

‘Very.’ He picked up his bag. ‘Well, this is where we say goodbye.’

‘Just au revoir,’ I said, reaching my arms out to him.

Our hug was awkward, what with our heavy bags banging against each other, but neither of us dismissed the affection and importance of it.

My words were spoken into his neck. ‘Good luck, Ernie.’

‘You too, Bertie.’

The fog from the moor was gathering around us.

‘Right.’ We let go of each other. ‘I’d better get to the station.’ I turned my head away. ‘Look after yourself.’

‘You too.’ Ernie was finding his boots suddenly fascinating. ‘Let’s hope the bally thing isn’t over before we get there. Toodle-pip.’

‘Bye.’

I watched him as he went; in just a few paces he had all but vanished in the fog. I could hear him whistling as he headed towards his barracks.

I stayed until I could hear him no longer, then set off on the three-mile walk to Bodmin Road station.

Back in London, the sun was shining. I reported for duty at Buckingham Gate and was given a warrant to attend the Abbotts Langley Camp two days hence. Two days! I could have stayed longer at home, after all. I quickly swept aside the guilt I felt for leaving my mother early and decided that if these were to be my last two days in London, I’d have a damn good time.

I had three guineas in my pocket, pressed on me by my father, with an order to go to the Army and Navy Stores on Victoria Street and kit myself out with extra socks, warm underwear, good boots, and a decent razor. The extravagance and pleasure of spending money buoyed me up no end. I even had some money left, so I went to a pub, ordered myself a pint of London Pride, and thought about how I might spend the evening.

The barmaid was very pretty and overtly flirty. She made it clear that, for payment, she would, as she put it, give me a relaxing hour when her shift finished. I let her down gently and politely and, when I paid my bill, left her a small tip for her kindness. She gave me a sweet smile and told me I would always know where I could find her.

I stepped outside into the warmth of the London evening. The city was full of promise and romance. Lighting a cigarette, I strolled south towards St James’s Park.

Buckingham Palace stood ahead of me. The Royal Standard was fluttering limply from its flagpole. I caught a glimpse of chandeliers, twinkling from the upstairs apartments. King George the Fifth was in residence. The same king I had sworn to serve only days ago.

The enormity of it all hit me like a club. I am not a religious man, much to my father’s disappointment, but at that moment I closed my eyes and prayed that I would be brave enough.

‘All right, sir?’ A policeman had approached.

‘Yes, yes,’ I stuttered, ‘Fine.’ Had he seen my appalling cowardice?

He tipped his helmet to me. ‘Have a good evening, sir.’

‘Thank you.’ I headed down The Mall. The scent of mown grass coming from Green Park on my left and St James’s Park on my right was sweet and reminded me of Cornwall.

I passed St James’s Palace and turned left, heading towards Piccadilly.

A memory struck me. Somewhere on Piccadilly there had been a bridge club I’d visit with friends when up from Cambridge. Could it still be there?

It took me about a quarter of an hour but I found it: 26B, The Piccadilly Bridge Club.

The familiar door was opened by a chap who was new; after a brief introduction, he pointed the way up the well-remembered, ornate but peeling staircase.

The quiet voices of players hummed behind the grand double doors of the club room, cheering me up. I was looking forward to a game and hopefully finding chaps who remembered me. I turned the door handle and poked my head around to make sure I was in the right place. It was the same room but it wasn’t quite the same atmosphere. This had always been a gentlemen’s club, but now I saw there were women sitting at the tables. I did what any chap would do in the circumstance, I walked in and went to the bar.

‘Scotch, please.’

‘Righto, sir.’

I leant my back to the bar and surveyed the room.

A man on the opposite wall took a cigar from his mouth and waved at me. ‘Bolitho!’ He navigated the tables briskly and arrived in front of me, wreathed in smiles. ‘Glad to see you. Glad to see you.’

‘Good God,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘Jimmy. Long time no see.’

‘How long has it been?’ He beamed.

‘Well, I’ve been in Malaya since early 1912.’

‘How hot is it?’

I laughed. ‘Is that all you can ask me after all these years?’ It was good to see him. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Oh, the usual. After Cambridge, I did Europe, the tour you know, bloody good timing. I hear the fighting is destroying the place.’

‘Yes. Terrible. I’ve been reading about it. Can I get you a drink?’

‘Scotch please.’

I caught the eye of the barman.

‘Anyway,’ Jimmy continued, ‘I came back because Father wanted me in the family business, you know the thing.’

I did know the thing. For generations his family had made their money from the bank bearing their name.

I paid the barman and handed Jimmy his whisky. ‘And are you enjoying it? The bank?’

He grinned, ‘Oh, let’s not talk about money, I want you to meet someone.’ He took my elbow. ‘I have found the woman of my dreams. And she’s a damn fine bridge player.’

He guided me to the edge of the room where two women were sitting on their own with a pack of cards lying in the middle of the small square table.

‘Marianne, may I present one of my best friends from Cambridge, Mr Herbert Bolitho.’

Marianne looked perfect for Jimmy. Clearly of good stock. Wearing a short pearl necklace and a good diamond on the fourth finger of her left hand. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you. Jimmy is a lucky man.’

Jimmy and Marianne looked at each other and giggled. ‘He certainly is,’ she said.

‘And this young lady is …’ Jimmy faltered, clearly not remembering the name of the other young woman.

She spoke for him. ‘Clara Carter.’ Her voice was low and even. Her hand felt cool as I shook it.

My first impression was of a young woman in her early twenties, dressed soberly and unadorned. No jewellery or rouge. Her dark hair in a neat bun at her neck. The edges of her eyes turned slightly down, almost sad, but they also shone with an interest and intelligence rarely seen in the eyes of the wealthy, bored women I had met in Malaya. She smiled. Her teeth were even. ‘Would you care to join us?’ she asked. ‘We can be partners.’

‘I’d love to,’ I said, pulling out the chair opposite her.

Jimmy sat down and nudged Marianne. ‘He’s a damned good player. We’d better keep a keen eye.’

‘Jimmy! Language.’

‘Sorry m’dear.’

Jimmy ordered some more drinks, and we began to play. And, as we played, the more I admired Clara. Not in a physical way but in the way she comported herself. The more we played, the more in tune we became. I liked the way she played, and the way I understood her eyes as they signalled to me what card she might play next and enquiring if I had something to our advantage. If I had concentrated more on the game and less on her, we might have won, but Jimmy and Marianne were ferociously competitive and bickered constantly.

It was almost a relief to let them win.

The barman signalled last orders and the room began to thin out.

‘Goodness.’ Marianne checked her watch. ‘Daddy will be so cross with me. I told him I’d be in by eleven and it’s now almost eleven thirty.’ She turned to Clara. ‘He waits up for me. I expect your parents are the same?’

‘Unfortunately, my parents are no longer alive,’ Clara said, without looking for sympathy. ‘I am my own keeper.’

‘God, I’m envious,’ snorted Marianne. ‘Can’t wait to get married. Jimmy and I will be free to do as we please.’

‘Steady on old girl.’ Jimmy put her coat, mink by the look, around her shoulders. ‘I shall have to take a cold bath when I get home.’

Out on the pavement, the air had cooled considerably. Jimmy and Marianne said their goodbyes and left Clara and me standing awkwardly together.

‘You play bridge very well,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘I am a beginner.’

‘Really? Well you seem to have picked it up very well.’

‘Thank you.’

‘May I walk you home?’ I asked.

‘It’s too far,’ she said, doing up her thin coat.

‘Where?’

She hesitated. ‘The other end of the Strand.’

‘Well I can’t let you go all that way on your own.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘It’s not out of my way, I have nowhere to stay tonight yet.’ I said it without thinking.

‘I see.’ She gave me a look of pure disappointment. ‘What do you take me for?’ She turned on her heels and walked quickly away, tossing over her shoulder, ‘Goodnight, Mr Bolitho.’

‘Miss Carter,’ I called, picking up my bag and running after her. ‘Miss Carter. You misunderstand me.’

‘Oh, I don’t think I do. I’ll call a policeman if you don’t leave me alone.’

‘I am the son of a vicar,’ I said plaintively. ‘I am about to go to France.’

‘Oh yes?’ Her look was withering. ‘That’s what they all say. I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘Honestly. It’s true. I arrived in London today and I have forty-eight hours before I go to my training camp in Abbotts Langley.’

She was striding away from me now. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘That came out all wrong.’ I went after her in order to explain. ‘I came up from Cornwall tonight not expecting to be given two days before I have to leave London. I need to book a bed for the night yet, which is why I have no hotel to go to …’

‘Well, you’re not having mine.’

I stopped walking and called after her, ‘I am so sorry. Please, I meant nothing. I won’t bother you any more. It’s been a delightful evening.’

She stopped. ‘Are you telling the truth?’

‘Yes.’

‘You really are a vicar’s son, who hasn’t got a bed, and is going to France?’

‘Yes. Honestly.’

‘Well.’ She paused, giving me the once-over. ‘You can walk me to my door and that’s it. As it happens there are a couple of hotels near me.’ She smiled. ‘I can’t have a brave soldier sleeping on a park bench, can I?’

‘Thank you.’

We began walking and I noticed she was shivering.

‘May I offer you my coat?’

‘No, thank you,’ she answered, and then looked at me. ‘Unless you don’t feel the cold?’

‘I grew up in Cornwall where the westerlies can freeze your ears off.’ She laughed at that and I took off my coat and helped her into it. ‘Better?’ I asked.

‘Much. Thank you.’

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