Dead to Me Read online

  On Saturday the 27th of August, Miller was to leave for Glasgow. Verity walked with him to Hither Green Station to wave him off. She could barely speak, she felt so sad, and when she did it was just trivialities to break the silence.

  The platform was crowded with people, many of the women crying as they saw their husbands or sons off. Such a public display of emotion made the impending war so much more real.

  ‘You will come back and see me sometimes?’ she asked anxiously.

  Miller put a hand on each of her shoulders and smiled down at her.

  ‘Why are you looking so worried for me? I’ll be safe where I’m going, and of course I’ll come back to see you. It’s you I’m concerned about. Promise me you’ll run to the public shelter the minute you hear the siren?’

  She managed a wobbly smile, afraid she might cry at his concern for her. ‘I promise,’ she said.

  He moved his hands from her shoulders to either side of her head, tilting her face up to his. ‘I don’t think you know how much you mean to me,’ he said, his eyes looking right into hers. ‘All this time I’ve been too scared to say anything as I’ve sensed you’ve had a bad experience with a man. But I must speak out now, Verity, before I leave. You are the girl of my dreams.’

  His lips came down on hers before she could even express delight at his words, his gentle, lingering kiss sending delicious shivers down her spine.

  She heard the train coming into the station and her arms came up involuntarily to cling to him.

  ‘Oh, Verity,’ he whispered, their noses still touching. ‘I wish I’d been brave enough to do that before.’

  ‘I wish you had too,’ she admitted.

  There was no time left for further declarations of feelings, or any promises. The carriage doors were open and the guard was yelling, ‘Hurry along!’

  Miller had to pick up his bag and, with just the briefest peck on her cheek and a squeeze of her hand, he pushed his way on to the already packed-to-capacity train.

  Verity waved until the train was in the distance, even though Miller had been elbowed too far down the carriage to see her out of the window. But once the train had disappeared from view she couldn’t hold back her tears, and she joined a throng of other crying women walking down the slope to the subway, many of them carrying babies or with children in tow. It ought to have made her feel less alone, but somehow it made her feel even more isolated.

  When she got back into the house and saw Miller’s raincoat gone from the peg in the hall and his work boots, which usually sat beneath it on some newspaper, missing, she cried again.

  Last night he’d spent a couple of hours polishing his boots till they looked fit to go on parade. She’d laughed at him and said the other foresters would think him odd wearing polished boots.

  ‘It’s kind of the same as having a clean shirt and a haircut,’ he claimed. ‘Besides, I’ve never seen you go out of the front door without putting on some lipstick. Why do you do that?’

  Last night she’d had no answer to that, but right now she didn’t think she’d want to put lipstick on ever again until he came back.

  As she made a cup of tea the walls seemed to be pressing in on her. Any day now, war might be declared, and she felt she must be the only person in the country who was totally alone.

  She took her tea out into the garden, but that was just another reminder of Miller. The two stools were still by the garden table, but she wouldn’t be eating her dinner out here now she was alone. Sitting on the arbour seat, she leaned back on the cushions, feeling the sun’s warmth on her face, and relived his kiss. She felt a little twinge of something low in her belly which she knew was desire, even though she’d never felt it before today.

  He said she was the girl of his dreams, and that was the most wonderful thing she’d ever heard. But how was she going to be able to deal with never knowing when she’d see him again?

  He was all around her, here in the garden; bright dahlias, asters and big yellow daisies were like his sunny disposition, and the jasmine, honeysuckle and pink climbing rose which had spread themselves right along the side fences were evidence of his tenacity and reliability. Sitting in the arbour she could be in the depths of the country, not surrounded by houses, but then that was what he’d set out to create.

  She didn’t know how much longer she had at Cooks of St Paul’s. Some of the stock and office equipment had already been moved to Hertfordshire, the rest would go when war was declared. She’d had an interview with the Post Office and was waiting to hear back from them, but then it seemed like the whole world and his wife were waiting for something.

  On the 1st of September, four days after Miller had left, it was announced on the wireless that Germany had invaded Poland, and that unless they withdrew a state of war would be declared.

  On Sunday morning, Verity switched on her wireless for the message from the Prime Minister that all of Britain was waiting for. Shudders went down her spine as she heard Chamberlain’s measured tones laying out that Germany had not backed down from invading Poland, and as Britain had made an assistance pact with the Poles, we were therefore now at war with Germany.

  It had been entirely expected, the country was ready for war, but still it was terrible. Then an air-raid warning siren went off and sent people running out on to the street, half expecting to see German soldiers marching along Lee High Road. It was a false alarm, of course, or just a practice run – but just the same, it was frightening.

  Verity stood out in the street with everyone else, but the babble of voices meant nothing to her. The only question repeating in her head was how was she going to get through a war alone?

  At the same time that Verity was standing outside her house feeling very alone, Wilby and Ruby were preparing Sunday lunch for themselves and the three evacuee children Wilby had taken in the previous day.

  The children were from North London – two sisters, Helen and Sandra, aged eight and nine, and ten-year-old Joseph. They had experienced a terrible long journey by train, arriving in Torquay late in the evening, and then had to suffer the indignity of waiting for someone to pick them out to take them home. No one, it seemed, wanted sisters, or a boy with red hair. Although Wilby had only intended to take in one child, when she saw the anxious expressions on the three small faces as, one by one, their friends were picked out, she felt she must take them.

  She had given the three children the game of Ludo to play with after Chamberlain’s speech on the wireless, as she felt the three of them needed a distraction. They had been told they would be safer away from London, but their first question after the speech had been to ask whether their mothers would be safe if the Germans bombed the city. And Helen, the younger of the two sisters, had started to cry.

  The children were calm again now, sitting on the floor in the sitting room, engrossed in the board game.

  ‘Will you go back to the Palace tomorrow?’ Wilby asked Ruby when they were alone in the kitchen.

  Ruby was one of the receptionists at the hotel now. As she had planned, she’d worked her way up through being a chambermaid and a waitress, and she was popular with other staff, and approved of by the management. They had been told some time ago that the hotel was to be requisitioned by the War Ministry and would be converted into a hospital for RAF officers in the event of war.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve been promised a job,’ Ruby replied. ‘You’ll remember me telling you almost all the young waiters have already joined up, and a lot of the girls are going into the Land Army. As for the older female staff, they all seem to want to work in factories, as the money is better than in a hotel. But I’m not sure what the older men will do. A few might be kept on as porters, I suppose.’

  ‘Civil Defence, I expect,’ Wilby said. ‘Everything from Home Guard to fire watching and rescuing people if there are air raids.’

  ‘There won’t be much call for that around here, surely?’ Ruby asked. ‘Plymouth and Portsmouth perhaps – the Germans are likely to target docks, after all �
� but there’s nothing for them here.’

  Wilby shrugged. ‘Depends if they want to bomb everywhere just because they can,’ she said. ‘But I agree, I can’t see us being in the front line of it. However, I can’t help worrying about people in London, they are far more likely to be singled out. I wish you’d contact Verity and see how she is faring.’

  Wilby half expected Ruby to round on her and tell her to mind her own business, but she had sensed that since the day back in the spring when they’d spoken about Verity, Ruby had spent some time considering how she could make amends with her old friend.

  The trouble was, Ruby had had to fight for everything since she was born, and that had made her remarkably stubborn, never wanting to go back on anything she’d said or done.

  But after what seemed an interminable time, Ruby sighed. ‘At the risk of you telling me “I told you so” I think I cooked my goose there,’ she admitted, looking rather sad. ‘I doubt even the most grovelling apology would work.’

  Wilby had to curb the desire to shout ‘Praise the Lord!’ and dance around the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t agree,’ she managed to say, as if she didn’t care either way. ‘Verity was always a very understanding girl, and she loved you. I believe you loved her too. Love doesn’t die, it just gets buried sometimes.’

  ‘Buried as deeply as I buried it, I must have squashed all life out of it,’ Ruby said, looking decidedly crestfallen.

  ‘War being declared will change people’s feelings about many things,’ Wilby said. ‘Write to her – or better still, take a trip to London and call on her. To save face you can make out you’re just checking she’s okay. But from what I remember of Verity, she’ll just be so glad to see you she won’t even think about how mean you were to her.’

  ‘I was very mean to her,’ Ruby admitted and hung her head. ‘She didn’t deserve to be treated that way. I’ll never be able to forgive myself for that.’

  She turned away then and walked into the next room. Wilby smiled to herself.

  Ruby looked down at the three children engrossed in playing Ludo on the sitting-room floor. She thought it was amazing how quickly they’d adjusted to their new home. Yesterday, totally confused at having to leave their mothers, they had been upset by the long journey to a strange place, and even more disturbed when they didn’t get picked for a new home straight away.

  But after a night’s sleep they looked like they’d always lived here. Ruby knew how that felt, as it had been the same for her when Wilby brought her here.

  She had, of course, been in a far worse state than these three – she really didn’t understand now what that had all been about – but a good meal, a soft warm bed and a house that somehow told you nothing bad could ever happen here was enough for most children, even Ruby. And these children had got the best to come yet, when they learned that Wilby was reliable, fun, understanding and generous with her love and time.

  ‘Fancy a walk down along the Downs before lunch?’ Ruby asked the children. ‘You can see the sea below, but unfortunately we aren’t allowed on the beaches any more, they’ve blocked them off with barbed wire.’

  All three turned towards her, their pale faces suddenly flushed with excitement. ‘The sea is that close?’ Sandra asked.

  ‘Just around the corner, at the foot of the cliff. There used to be a magic railway down the cliff,’ Ruby said, ‘but that’s closed too now for the war.’

  ‘Why?’ Sandra asked.

  ‘To stop Germans coming up on it,’ Ruby laughed. ‘If they had to climb up the cliff, they’d be too puffed to fight anyone, so they won’t bother trying now.’

  Wilby watched Ruby walking down the road from the front window. She was holding the two girls’ hands, and Joseph was just in front of them, hopping over cracks in the pavement. It was absolutely terrible to think England was at war again. After the last one, with so much destruction and appalling loss of life, she had believed the men in power would make absolutely certain it never happened again.

  But even so, the touching scene she was watching was a kind of evidence that good things could come out of bad. She’d got these three children to care for, and that would make her feel useful again. And with luck Verity would come back to the house again too.

  Wilby turned back to the kitchen to continue with the lunch. Ruby had changed in many ways since her abortion. She was quieter, no longer impulsive, and there was a sadness in her that nothing seemed to dispel. She’d also, understandably perhaps, grown harder towards young men. A handsome face and sweet talking didn’t lure her any longer, she barely glanced at groups of men congregating on the Downs on warm days, and rarely went to dances with girls from her work.

  Wilby was fairly certain that Ruby had devised her own mental list of requirements for prospective suitors, and only those who matched up got a date with her, and there had been no more than three or four of those in the last year.

  But while Wilby approved of her becoming more discerning, she was concerned that Ruby had lost that wonderful spontaneity she used to have. She weighed up everything now: risk, cost, time, effort. Wilby just hoped that meeting the right man and falling in love would bring back the part of her she’d lost.

  ‘Contact Verity soon,’ she murmured to herself. ‘We all need a special friend, and you, Ruby, more than most.’

  Archie Wood was broke and miserable and had spent the last three nights sleeping in a barn just outside Dover.

  He had realized a few weeks ago that war was inevitable and that it was probably safer for him in England than staying in France. But as soon as he got on the ferry to Dover, he regretted the decision. What he should have done was go right down to the south of France and hunker down with some amenable woman. Life was easier for him with people who didn’t speak the same language; details of where he was from, his past and, indeed, where he was going could all be fuzzed over when communication was difficult.

  He’d thought he was on to a winning streak with Mrs Carol Onslow, the landlady of a guest house in Folkestone who had rented him a room. Her husband had been called up, and on his second night there, after sharing a bottle of gin with her, he got her into bed. She was rather plain, a little overweight, the wrong side of forty, with straight brown hair and bad teeth. But he liked that she was eager for sex, and he thought after a few weeks with her, during which time he could find out where she hid her savings, he’d then be ready to move on, with those savings.

  But he reckoned without her skills as an interrogator. The questions began on their third night together.

  ‘What were you doing in France, Archie?’ she said, almost before he caught his breath after orgasm, and lighting a cigarette.

  ‘I’m in import and export.’ He gave his standard answer to such a question.

  She leaned up on her elbow beside him, and he noted how flabby her breasts were. ‘Importing and exporting what? Farm machinery, food, furniture, guns?’

  ‘Chemicals mostly,’ he said. That usually shut women up.

  But not her. She wanted to know if they were chemicals for medicines or fertilizers.

  ‘For all kinds of things at different times from different companies,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t show me your identity card,’ she said suddenly. ‘By law I’m supposed to ask to see everyone’s who comes here to stay. Did you forget, or haven’t you got one?’

  ‘I think you just forgot to ask me,’ he said. He hadn’t got one, and one thing he needed to do was get a forged one.

  ‘Well, get it now,’ she suggested.

  ‘No, I will not. There’s better things to do right now than study identity cards.’

  She laughed, and he thought that would be the end of it. It was for that night, but the next day the questions came even thicker and faster.

  Was he married? Had he got children? Where was he born? Was he in the army in the Great War? Why was he hanging around in Folkestone?

  He replied – the truth to some, lies to others – and said he was hangin
g around in Folkestone waiting for a fellow importer to contact him. Then she asked him for his identity card again, and he made an excuse to go to his room. He packed his bag, but as he came back down the stairs she insisted on seeing the card.

  He lost his patience and punched her in the jaw. She fell to the floor, banging her head hard, and Archie ran for it.

  That was how he came to be in the barn. She was bound to have called the police, and although he’d told her his name was Ivan Dunstable – the name on the false passport he’d acquired in France – they might show her pictures of wanted men, Archie Wood amongst them. But there was an even stronger likelihood, particularly in view of his vague answers to Carol’s questions about what he had been doing in France, that the police would think he was a fifth columnist, recruited by the Germans to spy or spread sedition.

  That was far more serious than being wanted for embezzlement.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  1940

  ‘I love these light evenings,’ Verity exclaimed to her friend as they came out of the telephone exchange at nine in the evening. ‘No more tripping over things in the dark on the way home when we work late.’

  ‘Remember what hell it was back in the winter?’ Amy said. ‘That bitter cold snap in January? You just couldn’t see the ice on the pavements. It was either sidle along cautiously like an old lady or rush to keep warm and risk landing up on your backside.’

  Verity laughed. She had been laughing a great deal since joining the Post Office back at the start of the war.

  The Phoney War was what the press called it. But most people, amused by the lack of drama or activity, said, ‘What War?’ Until quite recently nothing appeared to be happening, at least not in England. Many of the children who had been evacuated to the countryside last September were back home with their mothers by Christmas, because there had been none of the expected air raids. Sugar, butter and bacon had gone on ration back in January. But apart from that irritation and the hated blackout, life was much the same as before the war began.