Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming - Cathy Kelly - Страница 24

When she was older, Lily found that the seasons reminded her of different parts of her life. Spring was always Tamarin, when the bare trees were dotted with pouting acid-green buds of new life, and the fields changed from heavy umber to palest green dotted with velvety new lambs on shaky legs. Autumn was Rathnaree, when the staff toiled to get the great house ready for winter and when Sir Henry invited cronies to shoot or fish with him. Outside, the woods came alight with the russets and pale golds of autumn, while inside, apple logs burned in the grates and the kitchen steamed up with cooking for the parties of gentlemen.

But summer: summer would always be London during the war when the sun shone more brightly than ever before, and life was lived with far greater passion and ferocity than she’d imagined possible.

May 1944 was one of the hottest Mays on record, and on the rare occasions when they weren’t working, Lily, Diana and Maisie loved to sit on the tiny balcony on the third floor of the nurses’ home on Cubitt Street, faded and frayed cushions behind them, letting the heat sink into their tired bones.

They didn’t get too many opportunities to sit in the sun: time off was at a premium for third-year nursing students and Matron was an ardent believer in the mantra of the Devil making work for idle hands.

She would have been scandalised if she had seen them sitting on the balcony with their stockings off and their feet deliciously bare to the sun. But it had been a hard week, Lily thought, leaning back, and what Matron didn’t know, couldn’t harm her. In the delivery ward, Lily had been involved in the births of seventeen babies in that week alone.

She deserved a rest. That evening, she and the girls were going out to tea in Lyons Corner House, and afterwards to the Odeon to see Gaslight. She loved going to the cinema and immersing herself in the fantasy world onscreen. Joan Crawford was still her favourite film star, but she could see the lure of Ingrid Bergman. Maisie, who was prone to flights of imagination, said Lily had the same eyes as Ingrid.

‘Mysterious,’ Maisie insisted. ‘Like you’re thinking of a special man, somewhere.’

‘When she looks like that, she’s thinking of what’s for dinner,’ laughed Diana, who was much more prosaic and, like all of them, thought about food quite a lot.

Lily remembered the huge surplus of food at home, fresh eggs every day and her mother’s fragrant bread. She’d never realised how lucky she’d been. Now, the shortages had even spread to Ireland, where flour was in short supply. ‘We’re all eating black bread at the moment,’ her mother had written in her last letter. ‘Tastes like turf to my mind. Lady Irene’s got very thin on account of it.’

As the afternoon sun warmed her face, Lily wondered how she had ever lived anywhere other than here. It wasn’t just food that made her think back to Tamarin and Rathnaree: her mother working hard, never seeing anything but the bloody Lochraven family, never thinking of more. Lily herself had seen so much now – she’d helped in theatre when the hospital was short-staffed and had stayed standing despite the stench of discarded splints and dressings from men wounded overseas. She’d spent many nights in the basement during air-raids, comforting patients while trying to remain calm herself, telling them it would be fine, that the hospital had never taken a direct hit and wouldn’t now, when she knew no such thing.

She’d delivered two babies all by herself, and had felt a surge of pride when she’d heard that the Queen said she was glad Buckingham Palace had been bombed so now she could look the East End in the eye. Lily liked the Queen: she cared, keeping the little princesses in London despite the bombing. They were on rationing too, which was only right. Lily would have bet her last shilling that, if the Lochravens had been running the country, they’d still be eating plover’s eggs and lobster thermidor.

‘Is it bad not to want to go home?’ she asked Maisie.

‘Depends on what there is to go home to,’ Maisie said pragmatically. ‘There’s nothing for me to go home to, ‘cept Terry’s wife, and she won’t be welcoming me with open arms.’ Maisie’s mother had been killed during the Blitz as she’d opened the front door of her flat to rush for the Underground. Only her brother, Terry, was left of their small family, and he’d married a year ago when his girlfriend, a platinum blonde named Ruby, became pregnant. Ruby and Maisie didn’t see eye to eye.

‘Yes, sorry,’ said Lily, angry with herself for thinking out loud. ‘But when the war’s over, what then?’

‘You got listening privileges in the War Office, then?’ Maisie asked. ‘How’d you know it’s going to be over?’

‘It can’t go on for ever.’

‘Says who?’ Maisie found her cigarettes and lit one.

‘Tea’s ready, girls.’ Diana put three cups of tea down beside them, then swung her long legs down so the sun could warm them.

‘Thanks.’

‘Thanks, Diana.’ Lily sipped her tea, still wrinkling her nose at the first taste. She missed sugar, but had decided it was far better to save her coupons for actual tea.

Diana had given up coffee altogether. ‘I can’t bear the taste of Camp,’ she’d said, shuddering at even the notion of the coffee substitute. She’d told them once about drinking delicious pre-war coffee in Juan Les Pins in the South of France where she’d gone with her parents and sister, Sybil, and stayed in a fabulous villa with its own swimming pool and blue-and-white umbrellas to shelter one from the sun.

‘Lily’s going all maudlin on us, Di,’ said Maisie. ‘Wants to know what we’re going to do after.’

Diana’s perfect nose wrinkled. ‘Darling, heaven knows. Daddy will want me to get married, I suppose, so I’ll be off his hands, like Sybil. That’s what he thinks war is about – defending the country so your daughters can still get married in the family chapel.’

‘You never said you had a chapel.’ Maisie sat up. ‘I thought Sybil was getting married in an ordinary church.’

‘It’s only a small one,’ Diana said apologetically. ‘Lots of people have them. Not just us.’

‘Keep your knickers on, Princess,’ Maisie sighed. ‘I’ve never seen a house with a chapel before. Christ Almighty, I s’pose I’ll have to be on my best behaviour for this bloody wedding.’

You’re not the only one, Lily thought. She still felt unsure about attending Diana’s sister’s wedding. It was easy to forget that Diana came from another world, the world of privilege. She shared their room and they saw her asleep with her mouth open, and had watched her cram a cheese sandwich into her face after a twelve-hour shift when they’d not had a second to stop for a bite. But her family would be another matter. They’d already met Sybil, who was everything Diana was not: proud, sulky and keen to maintain the class divide.

Unlike Maisie, who was dying to see ‘how the other half lived’, Lily – who already knew exactly how they lived – was dreading the wedding. To Diana, she was a friend. To the Beltons, with their private chapel and grand house in London and pre-war holidays on the Riviera, she would be a servant girl. The war might have changed many things, but it hadn’t changed that much.

‘It’s going to be lovely,’ Maisie sighed happily.

At twenty-one, she was the youngest of the three and yet the one who tried everything first. She’d been first to go out with an American soldier.

‘Very polite, kept telling me about his mother,’ she said mournfully when she got back to the nurses’ home and the others pressed her for details. ‘Said English girls were ladies. We’d all be ladies if nobody ever put a hand on us.’

‘You’d be furious if he tried anything,’ pointed out Diana, who had finally got the measure of Maisie after almost three years of living in each other’s shadows.

‘Three hours hearing about his mother put me right off,’ snorted Maisie, not even bothering to respond to Diana’s remark. They were all so comfortable with each other: like sisters, they squabbled but always made up. They’d been through the fire together. It had created an unbreakable bond. ‘It was like having my Nan in the room, squawking, “If you let the dog see the rabbit, it’ll end in tears, my girl! Get the ring first!” And talkin’ of rings – I hope someone will take pictures of us at the wedding,’ Maisie added. ‘I want to see proof of me in my finery.’

“Course they will,’ Diana said. ‘Pictures for posterity.’

Lily didn’t know what they’d have done for clothes if it hadn’t been for Diana’s generosity. She had trunkloads of stuff: evening gowns and day suits she’d donated to the Impoverished of Hampstead Fund, as they called it. Maisie’s nimble fingers could take in or let out any garment. As Diana and Lily were almost the same size, not much alteration was required, but a few inches had to be taken off all the hems so they’d fit her.

Thanks to Diana’s capacious trunks, Maisie would be wearing a grey linen and silk suit and a dashing little silver feathered hat for Sybil’s wedding. Diana was to be a bridesmaid in one of her mother’s old Mainbocher gowns in a sea blue that made her English cream and roses complexion look even more beautiful, and Lily was to wear a crêpe de Chine navy spotted dress with a Chinese collar, a nipped-in waist that made her look like a very slender hourglass, and a swirling skirt. The only fly in the sartorial ointment was the lack of shoes. Diana’s feet were much bigger than Lily’s, too big for them to share shoes, so Lily would have to wear her hospital shoes, a pair of brown lace-ups sturdy enough to walk from London to the church.

‘You’ll still look smashing,’ Maisie had said loyally when they’d tried on their respective outfits.

With Diana’s great-aunt’s jade earrings bringing out the hints of viridian in her eyes, and her chestnut hair a mass of glossy curls, Lily knew she would look her best. But the shoes would not be the only thing to give it away.

Servants were far greater snobs than their masters and the person who’d said a good butler could ascertain a person’s social class from just one glance had not been lying. Lily knew that her background would be immediately apparent to all below stairs at Beltonward.

‘Come on, girls,’ she said now, getting up from her seat in the sun. ‘Let’s go out for tea: I’m starving.’

Beltonward was Lily’s worst nightmare. From the moment the old truck they’d got a lift on lurched over a hill and Diana cried: ‘Look, there it is,’ pride overcoming the politeness that made her play down her family’s wealth, Lily felt her heart sink to the soles of her shoes. Beltonward was a vast mansion, built along the lines of the huge houses commandeered by the Army, Navy and Air Force as bases for their operations. The only factor that had left Beltonward in private hands was its location far from anywhere. It was perfect as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, having acres of land for men to roam about and try to forget what they’d seen.

‘Christ Almighty,’ Maisie said. ‘You must be a bleedin’ princess, love, ‘cos your dad would need to be a king to keep this place going.’

‘Oh, Maisie, shut up,’ snapped Diana, with an unheard-of irritability that showed Lily that she wasn’t the only one anxious about the wedding.

Maisie shut up.

When the truck deposited them at the huge front door, two elderly gentlemen appeared.

‘Daddy,’ said Diana, leaping forward to hug the shabbier of the two. At least seventy, with a few strands of silver hair on his brown, liver-spotted head, he wore a much-darned knitted waistcoat, a pale blue shirt and silk foulard, and an amiable expression on his lined, bespectacled face.

‘Maisie and Lily, this is Daddy, Sir Archibald Belton, and Wilson.’

Try as she might, Lily couldn’t bring herself to call a man older than her father by his surname without some prefix. Wilson. No, couldn’t do it.

‘Hello, Sir Archibald, how do you do, Mr Wilson,’ she said.

Sir Archibald’s face didn’t flicker but Wilson looked marginally shocked.

Oh well, thought Lily, in for a penny, in for a pound.

She picked up her small valise.

‘Wilson can take your bags, m’dear,’ said the genial Sir Archibald.

‘Not at all,’ Lily said cheerfully. ‘I’ll carry it myself.’

Beltonward might have been stripped of most of its artwork (the valuable stuff was in the enormous cellar, along with the dwindling collection of wine – Sir Archie was said to be desolate that all his precious hock was gone), but the building itself still held treasures. As Sir Archie led them inside, chatting happily to his daughter, linking arms with her, Maisie and Lily were able to look around a vestibule – far too grand to be a hall, Lily grinned to herself – with a huge staircase stretching elegantly in front of them. A few portraits still hung on the faded damask red walls. Men with long Borzoi noses like Sir Archie, and powdered and berib-boned women like poor horse-faced Sybil, stared down at them, saying Yes, we’re rich and powerful and masters of all we survey.

Plasterwork picked out in tattered gold leaf caught the light and the vast vaulted ceiling was painted with frolicking cherubs and goddesses scampering through sun-lit clouds.

Two giant cracked blue-and-white vases decorated with peeping Chinese girls stood at the turn of the stairs and Lily knew enough from Rathnaree to recognise that they were worth something.

‘Christ Almighty,’ whispered Maisie as they climbed the marble steps, ‘I was never interested in marrying a toff, but I can see the attraction now.’

‘Not if you had to clean the steps yourself, you wouldn’t,’ Lily whispered back, thinking of the yards of marble at Rathnaree and knowing that, no matter how much money she had, she’d still hate to get another human being to clean her floors.

‘Good point.’

Maisie and Lily were to share a room and when they were alone, Lily sat down on one of the twin beds. The coverlet was pure white, quilted cotton. It was the newest thing in the room. Everything else was very old and faded, including the heavy floral curtains and the threadbare carpet.

‘Gawd, not quite the Ritz up here, is it?’ Maisie said.

‘Family rooms,’ Lily explained. ‘These are where family and friends of the children stay. The proper guest suites would be better, but nothing too showy. It’s bad taste to have the place too grand.’

‘I would, if I lived here,’ Maisie sighed, opening drawers and poking around.

‘That’s why you and I would never make toffs’ wives,’ Lily laughed. ‘We’d want round-the-clock heat, silk bedspreads like Greta Garbo’s and a Rolls-Royce, and the posh boy would want old curtains, no heating, and us darning his socks rather than buy new ones. Rich people don’t need to show off the fact that they’re rich.’

‘They’re odd, that’s for sure,’ Maisie said.

They tidied themselves up to meet Diana’s mother and the other guests.

‘Mummy’s in the little drawing room,’ Diana said as the three of them headed down the massive staircase once again. ‘She can’t wait to meet you.’

She’d changed from her travelling clothes and looked younger somehow in a pair of old jodhpurs and a light jersey. Lily felt as if she were seeing a new side to her friend now that she was at home. Again, she thought of her own home in Tamarin. She imagined taking Diana and Maisie there and showing them all the places she’d played as a child. The woods where she and Tommy played hide-and-seek, the stream where they’d lain on their bellies, dangling fingers in the cool water. She thought of introducing them to her mother, how they’d take to her instantly. Everyone loved Mam; she was so warm, so kind. Except, her mother would be different with Diana because Di was one of them. Why did it matter?

The small drawing room was on the left side of the house, where the family lived, as opposed to the east wing, which was currently occupied by the sanatorium.

Diana’s mother got to her feet and held out her arms as soon as she saw them.

‘How wonderful!’ she cried, with genuine delight. She was the image of Diana, only an older version, with the same sweet face, dancing smile and hair dotted with grey.

‘Hello, Lady Belton,’ said Lily formally.

‘I do feel as though I know you, girls,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard so much about you, and how kind you’ve been to Diana. I can never thank you enough.’ She beamed at them with such warmth that Lily finally felt herself relax. Perhaps it was going to be all right, after all.

Sir Archie, for all his amiability, was very much an old-style gentleman: charming, yes, but no doubt fully aware of his rank. But Lady Belton was much more in Diana’s style: kind to all, irrespective of background. Lady Irene would not have liked her one little bit, Lily thought with amusement.

Dinner was ‘just the family’, as Diana guilelessly put it. Lily, Maisie, Diana, Lady Evangeline and Sir Archie were joined by Sybil and her fiancé, the firm-jawed, largely silent Captain Philip Stanhope.

Sybil, two years younger than Diana, and a million years away from her sister in terms of temperament, only wanted to talk about her wedding the next day, and fretted about her dress, the flowers and how awful it was that they couldn’t have a proper society wedding because of the horrid old war.

Lily thought of the people who’d really experienced the horrid old war – people like Maisie, who’d lost her mother, and the young men in the other part of the house, battered inside and out by what they’d seen on the front line. Here in the idyllic world of Beltonward, the war seemed a long way away. Sybil worked with the local Land Army, and Lily couldn’t help wondering how Sybil went about supervising homesick nineteen-year-old land girls who’d signed up to help the war effort and found themselves miles from home, getting up at five to milk cows or drive a tractor.

‘You come from a farm. You should join the land girls,’ Sybil said sharply to Lily, as if she’d been able to see into her head.

‘Bit of a waste of my training, though,’ Lily said evenly.

‘Yes, but you started in Ireland,’ Sybil said, as if that in itself rendered the training useless.

Lily felt the familiar flare of anger inside her. She dampened it down.

‘I didn’t, actually,’ she said. ‘I didn’t nurse in Ireland at all. I worked for a local doctor.’

‘Sibs! Lily’s a better nurse than I am,’ Diana said.

‘If you say so,’ Sybil muttered, staring down her long nose at Lily.

‘Where did you say you came from again, m’dear?’ Sir Archie enquired.

Lily felt herself stiffen. She’d die, just die if he knew the Lochravens. She couldn’t bear a conversation about them, one that could only end with the realisation that Lily had worked as a lady’s maid at Rathnaree.

‘Waterford,’ she said, which was correct, after a fact. Tamarin was in the county of Waterford.

‘Oh, right,’ Sir Archie said.

After dinner, they all retired to the small drawing room where Lady Evangeline sat beside the unlit fire to work on a tapestry of a unicorn in a verdant wood, and Diana, Sybil, Sir Archie and Philip played cards. Maisie and Lily, neither of whom liked cards – Lily had only said it because she was sure the games she’d played at home weren’t the sort Sybil had in mind – sat on the window seat and talked as they looked out over the grounds.

Wilson, Philip and Sir Archie had assembled all the garden chairs on the small terrace beside the rose garden for the wedding party. The plan was to open the terrace doors so the guests could wander in and out at will. Sybil was still sulking because the convalescents hadn’t been cleared out of the ballroom for her big day.

‘Do you think she and the captain have done it?’ Maisie whispered now.

‘Sybil?’ Lily shrugged. ‘Don’t know. They don’t look like they’re at it like knives, do they?’

Philip and Sybil had known each other since childhood, and Lily couldn’t discern any passion between the two of them. She’d seen some of the nurses come home from nights out flushed and with their lipstick kissed off, their hair dishevelled. They always crept in – if Matron found them, there would be hell to pay. Lily always wondered what it would be like to feel such wild passion for a man. She didn’t know if she’d ever experience it. She’d been out with men, of course, but she’d never felt the slightest passion for any of them.

‘I’d sleep with my fiancé if I was engaged,’ Maisie said suddenly and surprisingly. Lily had always thought Maisie the most moral of them all. For all her Christ Almightys and jokes about frolicking with soldiers in the back seat of the cinema, she had been brought up to follow a strict moral code. ‘He could go off to the front and you’d never have been together. At least if you were engaged and you fell pregnant, you’d have something of his if he didn’t come back.’

‘I suppose,’ Lily said, shuddering. ‘There couldn’t be anything worse, could there? Loving someone and having them shipped overseas to who knows what. How would you sleep at night?’

‘Maybe that’s why the three of us are pals,’ Maisie mused. “Cos we don’t have sweethearts overseas. We’re not mooning over men somewhere else, not like those girls who can’t hold a conversation without turning it back to their beloved in Africa or wherever.’

Lily laughed at that. ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘Besides, men complicate things. We’d have to leave the hospital if we got married, and we’d be out on our ear if we got pregnant.’ Neither was even a vague possibility for Lily. Romance was very low down her list of priorities; her job mattered most. And she worked such long hours that it was almost impossible to have a life outside the hospital, although other nurses managed it. Both Diana and Maisie went out to dinner and to the cinema with men, but she rarely did. ‘We see too many sick people and too much death. It puts you off love.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Maisie laughed. ‘I’m still looking. Maybe there’ll be some lovely bloke here tomorrow to whisk me off my feet.’

‘More likely some old duffer will get sunstroke and you’ll have to sponge him down for the afternoon.’

‘Knowing my luck, you’re right!’

The day of the wedding was every bride’s dream: a sunny, cloudless blue sky without the fierce heat that would wilt the flowers begged and borrowed from every garden in the neighbourhood. Lily was up early and she took a long walk through the gardens and into the pastures behind the house where a small herd of cows now grazed contentedly, swatting their tails lazily at flies. If she closed her eyes and breathed in, Lily could almost imagine she was in the fields at home with the familiar scents of the earth and cattle around her. She felt a pang of homesickness.

Back at the house, all was mayhem. Sybil’s voice could be heard wailing about her hair and how someone had run off with her perfume.

‘There was only a little bit left, and I was saving it for today!’ she roared. ‘How could this happen to me?’

Lily and Maisie dressed quickly, and each fixed the other’s hair.

‘Yours is so glossy,’ Maisie said, standing back to admire Lily’s rippling chestnut curls that she’d pinned up at the sides with two tortoiseshell combs. ‘Did you rinse it in beer or something?’

‘Not beer,’ grinned Lily. ‘Perfume!’

‘You’re fibbing?’ giggled Maisie.

‘Yes.’

‘It would serve the horrible little monster right. I don’t know how Diana sticks her,’ Maisie said.

‘Oh, she’s not that bad,’ Lily pointed out. ‘She’s just spoilt and hasn’t seen very much. If she was living with us for a while, we’d rub the corners off her. A few days as an aide in the hospital would bring her down to earth.’

‘Thought you hated her.’

Lily shook her head. ‘No, I was letting the chip on my shoulder bump into the chip on hers, that’s all. I should know better. She’s just a kid, really.’

‘You are a wise old bird,’ Maisie said. ‘Let’s give Miss Uppity Knickers a chance, then.’

‘Mrs Uppity Knickers after four o’ clock,’ Lily added, laughing.

The chapel was indeed tiny and simple, with an almost puritanical stone altar and stone pews softened only by elderly velvet kneelers in old gold. Lily felt a gentle shiver of anxiety at just being there: Catholics weren’t supposed to celebrate in other churches, she knew, but still, it was for a wedding, she reasoned. That must be all right, surely? She’d mention it at confession and be vague in her letter to her mother.

By four o’clock, there were some forty guests assembled, including the vicar and a white-haired old lady seated at the organ to the right. Unlike pre-war weddings, Diana had said, most of the family’s friends would be unable to attend, and the few who could were simply rushing in for a few hours and then leaving again. With this in mind, Sybil was not allowed to be late, so it was only ten minutes after four when the bride appeared on her proud father’s arm and the congregation let out a collective gasp. Not for her a wedding dress of parachute silk: Sybil’s gown was Brussels lace, made over from a court dress of her mother’s. She didn’t have her elder sister’s fair colouring or symmetrical features, or Diana’s true loveliness, which came from within, even so, Sybil looked lovely on her wedding day.

The groom clearly thought so; his face softened as he turned to look at her. For the first time, Lily saw the face of his best man, a fellow naval officer. He was taller than Philip and, for a moment, his eyes met Lily’s across the little chapel. Lucent grey eyes locked with Lily’s startling blue ones, and she felt as if a little dart of fire had just lit inside her. Then, his gaze was gone, and Lily was able to study him and catch her breath a little.

The ceremony was short and simple, totally unlike the Catholic marriage services that Lily was used to. When it was over, Sybil and her husband walked down the aisle, Sybil looking triumphant now that she’d got her man.

‘I always cry at weddings,’ said Maisie, patting her eyes with a little lace-edged hanky as they made their way out of the chapel. ‘Don’t know why. My mum always said I was daft for crying. Wish my old mum could see me now.’ For a moment, Maisie’s eternal optimism appeared to desert her and her eyes shone suspiciously brightly.

‘Mine too,’ said Lily, putting her arm round her little friend. She was lying. Her mother would be a bag of nerves to see her daughter hobnobbing with the aristocracy. ‘Your mum would be proud as punch to see you here,’ Lily whispered. ‘What’s that thing she always said: Bless my…what was it?’

‘Bless my sainted aunt,’ laughed Maisie. ‘Poor Mum never cursed, not like me. She’d have said, “Bless my sainted aunt, Maisie, look at you drinking Gin and It with the nobs.”’

‘May I refresh your glass, miss?’ Wilson, still as stiff as a man with a poker firmly holding him upright, appeared beside them.

Lily felt the weight of his disapproval. Everyone else was lovely to Diana’s fellow nurses; even Sir Archie was charming in that vague way of his. Only Wilson behaved as if they were two beggars who’d wheedled their way into the throne room to run off with the family silver.

‘Why not?’ Maisie drained the last of her drink. Straight gin and a full measure of Italian vermouth: Gin and It, her favourite cocktail. ‘Thanks, love.’ She beamed at Wilson, her pretty face utterly unaffected by his stern demeanour. Lily envied her. How wonderful it would be not to care about the Wilsons of this world; blissfully free from that sense of not belonging. Maisie was comfortable wherever she was, the same as Diana. Both of them had an inbuilt sense of security that meant they never looked at anyone else and wondered what they were thinking. Lily never stopped.

Somehow Lady Belton had managed better than the two pounds of boiled ham that was allowed on ration cards for a wedding. Even though Sir Archie was very strict, even he had only muttered a little when Evangeline had got her hands on pork cutlets and some real bantam eggs for the wedding feast. She’d saved several weeks’ worth of her own hens’ eggs.

She kept four hens in the kitchen garden and looked after them herself. ‘I can’t imagine Mummy looking after chickens before the war,’ Diana had said. ‘She’s very resilient, you know. She can turn her hands to anything.’

The eggs had made delicate egg and watercress sandwiches, while the bantams’ eggs had been hard-boiled and were served with lettuces from the kitchen garden. There was no hope of having a traditional wedding cake so there were lots of little jellies with flowers for decoration and a tiny single-tier sponge cake. It all looked absolutely beautiful and, for once, even Sybil couldn’t complain.

Lily watched her losing her rigidity as she drank some of Sir Archie’s precious champagne. It was a lovely day and people wandered out on to the terrace, sitting on the chairs to enjoy the mid-May sunshine.

Sybil and Philip had danced to a couple of waltzes first for the benefit of the older members of the party, then Philip’s jazz records went on.

‘I love this music,’ Sybil said dreamily, as she whirled round in her new husband’s arms.

Suddenly, their happiness got to Lily. Tamarin had been in her mind and her heart all day and she felt a huge pang of loneliness. What was she doing here? She took her glass and wandered out to the terrace.

When the war was over, she would go home. Whatever she’d been searching for wasn’t here. At least at home she’d be among her own people and if she felt out of step with them…well, she’d discovered that she felt out of step everywhere.

‘Hello,’ said a voice.

She turned her head and found Philip’s best man beside her, the naval officer. She wasn’t sure of his rank: she’d never had Diana’s ability to read insignia and battledress ribbons.

‘Are you escaping too?’ His accent was soft, a hint of a Scottish burr in there somewhere.

Lily gazed at him for a moment. She’d become an expert in saying the right thing – part of learning how to live in a different country was the chameleon ability to blend in. But at that exact moment in time, she was fed up with blending in. Thinking of home made her sense of alienation spike.

‘Yes,’ she said bluntly. ‘I feel as if I don’t belong. I don’t know anyone here, except Diana and Maisie. I don’t want to talk about old yachting trips in the Med,’ she added, her gaze on the bride as she whirled past the terrace door.

‘War makes small talk difficult,’ he agreed, his eyes following hers and alighting on the new Mrs Stanhope. ‘It’s hard to care about trivialities when…’ he edited himself, ‘when so much is going on.’

Lily looked at him with renewed interest. She’d half been expecting him to say, ‘Cheer up, old girl. Another drink?’ As if blotting everything out with gin was the correct answer to all life’s problems. But this man didn’t have the gay, polished charm of Diana’s officer friends, men who’d joke with that quintessential upper-class British charm even in front of the firing squad. He was rougher hewn, tougher. Even his wide square face with the flat prizefighter’s nose and deep-set eyes gave him more the look of a peasant turned warlord than an aristocrat.

‘My excuse is being an outsider, but surely you must know everyone here?’ she probed.

‘Quite a few of them,’ he agreed. ‘Philip and I were friends at school.’ He held out a big hand. ‘Lieutenant Jamie Hamilton,’ he said formally.

Lily stared at him. She took his hand and felt the same shot of adrenaline she’d felt in the chapel when he’d stared straight at her.

‘Jamie, that and your accent tell me you’re not from around these parts,’ she said to hide how jolted she felt.

‘I’m Scottish, from Ayrshire,’ he said. ‘And you’re Nurse Lily Kennedy from Ireland.’

‘Yes,’ she smiled. It would be plain to anyone listening to her that she was Irish, but she wondered how he knew her name.

‘Difficult job,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, looking at him, ‘very difficult.’

‘Does it get to you?’ he asked. ‘Seeing the injuries, the death.’

Few people ever asked Lily questions like that. Perhaps it was because everyone in London saw the results of the war day-in-day-out. Plus the fact that most people would prefer to talk about anything else. Even when somebody died, the period of mourning seemed to be growing shorter and shorter, as if people were afraid to think about death. To acknowledge death, to linger over it, was too depressing; the only sensible survival option was to turn their faces bravely towards the next day and move on.

‘Yes,’ she said to Jamie Hamilton now, ‘it does get to me. Especially the children. Last week two little boys were brought in – brothers, they couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven. They were still in their blue-and-white striped pyjamas, looking like they’d just been picked out of their beds, fast asleep. And they were dead, from a bomb. I keep thinking about them.

‘It’s four years since I started my training, and I think if I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have become a nurse. I had a misty idea that it was about helping people, giving comfort, being this kind being in the middle of someone’s pain. And it’s not like that: it’s about desperately trying to keep people alive, all at a frantic speed, watching them die terrible deaths, being powerless a lot of the time…I don’t know how to describe it,’ she said. ‘But there’s an adrenaline rush too, when you’re working in theatre or on the wards on a very busy day and you’ve got to keep going because, if you don’t, someone will suffer.’ She stopped, feeling out of breath from all she’d said.

‘Do parties help you unwind, or just make it worse?’ he asked.

Lily laughed. ‘A bit of both,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely to forget about it all for a while and dance, and then, I feel I shouldn’t be forgetting about it.’

She turned away from him to watch the dancers inside.

‘I feel the same way,’ he said. ‘When you’re in the middle of the war, you want to be away from it, and when you’re away from it, you want to be there again.’

‘Where do you serve?’ she asked him.

‘I’m first lieutenant, second-in-command, on a submarine. I was injured out a month ago.’

She noticed he didn’t tell her where in the world or how he’d been injured. Submariners, she’d heard, held their cards close to their chest.

‘You work with Diana, don’t you, in the Royal Free?’

She nodded. Two could play the game of keeping their cards close.

‘Where do you come from?’ he asked.

‘A little place called Tamarin, in the south of Ireland. You won’t have heard of it, it’s on the coast, very pretty, very quiet, very unlike London.’

‘Why did you leave?’

‘Because I wanted to be a nurse and I couldn’t afford to pay for training at home. My father’s a blacksmith and my mother is a housekeeper in a house not unlike this one, only not as big,’ she said. I’m different, she was saying. This is who I am. If you like me, you’ll stay. But I won’t pretend. I’m not from your world.

From inside, they could hear the sounds of Maisie singing ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk…’ It was Maisie’s party piece. She had a beautiful voice and would have them all dancing soon. It was a gift, the gift of charm and making people like her. Lily knew she didn’t have that gift herself. She was too wary, too inclined to stand on the sidelines and watch.

Jamie was watching her now. She felt something inside her quiver at the way he looked at her, something shift.

‘I think we’re the only two people not laughing and joking,’ Lily said suddenly, as great peals of laughter came from inside. ‘I’m surprised Sybil hasn’t had us thrown out. She’s very keen on the whole wedding being done perfectly.’

Jamie moved closer so that he was standing right beside her. ‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, ‘but I’m enjoying myself.’

‘Are you now?’ she asked, moving past him. ‘I do hope you keep enjoying yourself, Lieutenant. If you’ll excuse me.’

She went to the cloakroom, where she splashed water on her flushed face, then tried to repair the damage with a dusting of the English Rose powder that didn’t really suit her but was all she had left. Her precious Chinese Red lipstick was down to the very stub and she used a hairpin to eke a last bit out to smear on to her full lips.

Bright eyes shone back at her in the mirror and she felt an unaccustomed surge of pride in her appearance. Her skin was flawless cream without a single freckle and it contrasted with the rich chestnut hair swept back from a fine-boned oval face. The spark of intelligence in almond-shaped eyes shifted her looks from mere prettiness to an arresting, wild beauty.

After she’d told Cheryl off, the other nurses had taken to calling her the Wild Irish Girl. It had been a compliment, she supposed, showing that they saw her as self-composed, strong, and confident. She had something to be grateful to the Lochravens for. Watching Lady Irene had taught her the virtue of calm self-possession and Lily’s determination to be different from every other member of the servant class on the Rathnaree estate had given her a queenly bearing.

‘You’re not looking bad, Nurse Kennedy,’ she told herself.

The gramophone was playing Glenn Miller when she returned to the drawing room, and everyone was dancing, determined to squeeze the last bit of enjoyment out of the day. It was nearly eight and she knew that many of the guests would be leaving soon, hurrying back to barracks or their postings before nightfall. The party was winding down.

Diana had whispered to Lily that the groom’s leave had been cancelled: nobody knew why, but there was some talk about a big offensive. Sybil didn’t know yet.

‘He’s going to have to leave this evening. The honeymoon’s on hold. Wouldn’t like to be him, poor boy.’

Lily stood and watched the dancing, breathing in the melody and swaying on her feet. She tried to shut out the speculation about the big push that would be taking the menfolk away. Whatever it was, they’d soon find out the hard way, when the casualties were wheeled in and a twelve-hour shift turned into an entire night with both shifts working in tandem.

‘Do you care to dance?’

He was beside her, taller than she was, and suddenly Lily could think of nothing she’d like more.

‘I’d love to,’ she said. ‘I’m not very good –’

She was too tall and most partners seemed to prefer smaller women.

‘Me neither,’ Jamie said, with a smile that lit up the hardness of his face.

He was lying. From the moment he took her hand, Lily felt his rhythm and energy join with hers. It was like being sprinkled with magic dancing dust. The music was loud, all-encompassing, and they fitted into a space on the floor seamlessly. Lily wondered whether everyone else could see the electricity between them. Surely they must? Jamie’s hand pressing into the intimacy of her back felt as if he was touching her flesh, stroking her skin erotically, and not the silken crêpe fabric. She could sense the great strength of his wrist as his other hand held hers tightly, and under his uniform, her fingers felt powerful shoulder muscles move. It wasn’t like dancing: it was like making love.

The music rippled to an end and they stopped dancing and stood staring at each other.

‘Let’s hear it again!’ cried Sybil, like a child, and someone scratched the needle over the gramophone record.

Lily hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath until the music started again.

‘I don’t want it to stop,’ he said, his voice close to her ear. Lily closed her eyes and allowed herself to be pulled closer. While around them, couples danced with exuberance, she and Jamie moved as if to different, slower music.

She stared up at him as his dark eyes bored into hers, telling her that he wanted her just as much as she wanted him.

A whoop from behind made them turn to see Maisie being whirled by one of Philip’s American friends, a blond Army captain who was matching Maisie’s fabulous jitterbugging, swinging her as if she was a doll, her skirts flying.

Seeing Maisie broke the spell. Lily gave herself a mental shake. What had come over her? She’d been around too long to dally with a handsome man in uniform. That wasn’t her plan. And Jamie, no matter how attractive she found him, was from that other world, Diana’s world.

‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll sit down,’ she told him quickly, determinedly not noticing the disappointment briefly etched on his face.

‘Can I get you something to drink?’ he asked, a mask of politeness up.

Lily would have preferred it if he’d said: ‘What’s wrong with you?’ But his type never would. That was the one joy of the upper classes: they took it all on the chin. A lad back home from Tamarin would have demanded to know why she’d stopped dancing.

‘No, thank you,’ Lily said, just as politely. ‘I got a bit carried away there with the dancing.’ And with you, she wanted to say. ‘I think I’ll sit the next one out.’ She spied Diana standing on the fringes of the group, watching and smiling. ‘Diana’s a marvellous dancer.’

‘I know,’ he said, jaw solid.

‘Good, then you know what a wonderful girl she is too,’ Lily added. She wasn’t sure why she was doing this: urging Jamie to go over to Diana. But he was everything Diana wanted in a man and Lily loved Diana like a sister. Diana longed to be in love and Jamie was, Izzie sighed to herself, special.

‘You’re sending me to dance with Diana?’ he asked, mildly amused.

Lily felt a spark of anger at his amusement. What was he laughing at?

‘She’s probably more your type,’ she said. Damn, that sounded wrong. ‘I mean, you come from the same –’

‘– background?’ he provided.

‘Yes,’ she snapped.

They’d moved away from the dancers now and were at the other end of the room where people were sitting on sofas and chairs, chatting and drinking.

‘Is that important to you?’ he asked. ‘Background?’

‘I bet it is to you.’

‘Not really. Not with the right person.’

‘Good luck finding the right person,’ she said sweetly, then went to sit beside Diana’s maiden aunt Daphne, who was stone deaf.

That would show him, she thought, shouting greetings at Aunt Daphne and all the while watching Jamie, who was still standing close by, smiling at her in a way she could only describe as wicked. He caught her eye and one dark eyebrow lifted marginally, as if to say, I see your game, my dear.

‘Lovely music,’ she shouted at Aunt Daphne, then cursed herself because poor Daphne couldn’t hear very much of anything, much less the music.

‘What?’ screeched the old lady, cupping an ear with one hand while the other held a glass brimming with one of Wilson’s Gin and Italians.

After half an hour of Daphne, and watching Jamie out of the corner of her eye, Lily felt some of the tension leave her when she saw Sybil storm by in tears. If Philip had to leave that night, she assumed that Jamie would go with him. When Jamie was gone, she could relax.

Fifteen minutes later, a red-eyed Sybil and the rest of the wedding party assembled in the vast hall for the leave-takings.

‘I can’t throw my bouquet,’ Sybil wailed to her mother, who was fussing over her, trying to dab at Sybil’s face with a handkerchief.

‘Chin up, darling,’ said Lady Evangeline.

‘I can’t!’

‘Oh, darling, we’ll have another party for your wedding, soon, I promise,’ Philip could be heard saying.

‘Promise?’ sniffled his bride.

‘Promise.’

‘Poor bloke, I feel sorry for him,’ Maisie whispered to Lily. Maisie was definitely tipsy now, rosy-cheeked and sleepy from the cocktails. ‘Doesn’t know what he’s got himself into, I reckon. He’ll soon find out.’

‘Here goes!’ shouted Sybil.

‘Girls, watch out!’ shrieked Diana.

The bouquet was high in the air and then Lily looked up to see it falling, falling, right towards her. At the last second, she grabbed Maisie and shoved her in its path.

‘Lawks!’ squealed Maisie as the flowers fell quite literally on top of her.

Everyone laughed, especially Lily.

Then she felt a strong hand on her waist, gripping her body in the navy spotted crêpe de Chine, the heat of the embrace burning through to her skin.

‘I wanted to say goodbye, Nurse Kennedy,’ said Jamie, his face bent so it was inches away from hers.

In the throng of the crowd, they were pushed against each other.

Their lips met, fiercely and hot.

And then, in an instant, he drew back.

‘Till we meet again?’

Lily could do nothing but look at him as the two men went out the door, comrades and relatives crowding them.

‘Here comes the bride,’ sang Maisie tunelessly, waving her bouquet and putting her arm around Lily.

‘Wasn’t it lovely?’ she sighed.

Lily’s eyes were on the door where Jamie had been moments before.

‘Lovely,’ she breathed, and touched her lips where he’d kissed them. She’d been kissed before but never like that. Why had she played stupid games with him? Why walk away when they were dancing?

She felt furious with herself. That inherent spikiness in her character had let her down again. Now he was gone and who knew when she’d see him again?