The Last Lifeboat, page 28
After a short while, the door opens. A woman in a cream silk blouse and navy skirt smiles. ‘Can I help you?’
Lily says exactly what she’s rehearsed. ‘Wimborne sent me. I am interested in the Stately ’Omes of England.’ She’s worked out that the letters SOE are significant, but isn’t yet sure why.
The woman looks at her, nods, and holds out a hand. ‘Then you’re very welcome, Miss …’
‘Nicholls. Mrs Lily Nicholls.’
‘Welcome, Mrs Nicholls. Please, come in. Are you aware of the nature of our work here?’
‘Not really. Mr Wimborne was interested in my ability to complete crossword puzzles. That’s all.’
The woman smiles. ‘Of course. This way. He’ll be very pleased to see you.’
14 February 1940
Left for training camp today. Unbearable to look at the children’s faces when I told them I was going away for a while, to help the men win the war. They promised to be very good for their mother. Impossible to say goodbye to my darling Lil. Expected to feel angry, or afraid, but when I looked at her standing on the doorstep, I felt nothing but immeasurable unspeakable love.
Mass-Observation, Diarist #6672
45
London, March 1941
Alice makes a note of the nearest underground stations and air-raid shelters as she walks beneath Admiralty Arch, along Horse Guards Parade, towards Lyons Corner House on Birdcage Walk. Britain’s cities are still under regular bombardment from the Luftwaffe, so being prepared for an air raid is part of everyday life. She often wonders how they all keep going, but they do.
Kitty is already at their usual table at the back. Everybody avoids sitting beside the windows these days.
‘Started without me, I see!’ Alice kisses Kitty on the cheek and takes the seat opposite her.
‘I was gasping. And you’re late.’
‘Yes, sorry about that. The bus took a detour. UXB on Tottenham Court Road.’ She pours a cup of tea from a dribbly teapot. ‘Well? Did you finish it?’
A smile spreads across Kitty’s face. The full bloom of pregnancy suits her, although Alice has learned not to say as much because Kitty is convinced she resembles a large toad.
‘Yes, I finished it!’
‘Come on then. Show me!’
Kitty fishes in her handbag. ‘Here. Have a read while I nip to the loo. I’m rather proud of this one.’
Alice takes the typed pages and starts to read.
Dear Sirs,
I write, once again, in the hope that you will publish my letter in the Times Educational Supplement. The facts and events surrounding the tragedy of SS Carlisle – set out below – must be made public, because while we cannot undo what happened, we can prevent it happening again. It is disappointing that a full inquiry was not considered necessary. Not necessary for the grieving parents desperate for answers, or for those in positions of authority who wished to avoid public scrutiny of their actions?
It is now known that the assurances given to parents, particularly regarding the issue of evacuee ships being under naval escort, fell rather short, and that many lives were lost as a result of actions taken at the time of the attack on SS Carlisle. The immediate suspension of the CORB programme was the right decision.
It is my hope that the points set out below will ensure that significant changes are put in place should the evacuation programme resume at any stage during the current conflict. While it is too late for those who stepped onto SS Carlisle last September, their legacy must be in the assurance that a tragedy of this nature can never happen again.
Anon
Facts regarding the loss of life on SS Carlisle:
1. SS Carlisle was to be convoyed. This was made clear in all correspondence with parents. However, at the time of the torpedo attack, the Carlisle was not ‘being convoyed’. To be in a state of ‘being convoyed’ a ship must have its escort in attendance.
2. The escorting warships departed on the morning of 17 September, at the predetermined ‘limit of convoy escort’. Yet Ministry records show that U-boats were active beyond this limit in the weeks preceding SS Carlisle’s departure.
3. Despite having left the convoy only that morning, the escort vessels did not return to the scene of the attack to assist in a rescue. HMS Imperial – the ship that responded to the SOS – was some 400 miles away. There is no adequate explanation as to why the escort vessels failed to return.
4. There were no designated rescue ships in the Carlisle’s convoy, as is standard shipping practice. The explanation offered for this is that rescue ships may operate only when a convoy is under naval escort. See point 1) above.
5. The convoy was not given orders to disperse following the departure of the escort vessels on the morning of 17 September. Convoy dispersal is usual practice, and would have allowed the Carlisle – and other ships in the convoy – to proceed at greater speed, and in an evasive zig-zag pattern, to avoid detection by U-boats. By remaining in convoy, they were at greater risk of attack.
6. The Lord Admiral was not aware of the special ‘payload’ the Carlisle was transporting. He has said that alternative ‘special’ arrangements would have been given to SS Carlisle, her escort and her convoy had it been widely known that she was carrying evacuees. His remarks suggest that this was an entirely avoidable tragedy.
Alice folds the letter and places it on the table. It is difficult to see everything set out so precisely, to see how easily the tragedy might have been prevented. Her memories are still raw and painful.
‘Well. What do you think?’ Kitty asks when she returns.
‘It should be framed and hung in Parliament, never mind printed in the pages of the Times Educational Supplement. It’s very powerful, Kitty. I wish you could put your name to it and take the credit, even if it would get you, and your friends at the Ministry, in trouble. Everyone will assume some man has written it.’
Kitty waves her hands dismissively. ‘Let them assume. It doesn’t matter who wrote it. What matters is that people read it, and that those in power act on it. What matters is that this never happens again. If I can use my old position as a glorified secretary at CORB to play a small part in that, then I’m glad to.’
Alice admires her sister, fighting for the protection of children she’ll never know. ‘I’m very proud of you, Kitty.’
‘Oh stop it! It’s hard work being the sister of the Alice King. I can’t have you getting all the adulation!’
Alice still shies away from any suggestion of heroism, although countless newspaper articles, and even a book written about her, insist that her role in the lifeboat was nothing short of heroic. Before the Carlisle tragedy, she’d thought it only mattered if you helped in the loud dramatic moments of war, but it is in the quiet aftermath, in her role at the WVS, that she is at her best. A kind word, a cup of tea, a hot meal, teaching a soldier how to sew and repair his uniform or suggesting the perfect book to take his mind off the horrors he has seen, finding a home for someone who has nothing other than the clothes they are dressed in. These are the real acts of heroism. Ordinary women, holding the country together. The quiet essential backbone of the war on the home front.
‘Any word from Howard?’ Alice asks.
Kitty can’t hide her smile. ‘Had a letter yesterday, as it happens. He’s in good spirits. Ever hopeful that victory will be declared soon. You know what an eternal optimist he is! He asked after you, by the way. Said to say hello, and to tell you that Great Expectations is much better than David Copperfield.’
‘Well, you can tell him that’s absolute nonsense. He’s clearly had a bang to the head and should see a medic!’
In the end, flat feet didn’t stop Howard going to war. Men were needed in their thousands and Howard was especially keen to do his bit after everything he’d been through at the hands of the Nazis. It hadn’t taken Alice long to realize that her fondness for Howard was rooted in friendship, not romance. She’d noticed how well he and Kitty got along while they were all still in Scotland, how much they made each other laugh, how they couldn’t stop looking at each other. It was Alice who’d encouraged them to keep in touch while Howard was away, and to meet for lunch when he was on leave, and to visit Willow Cottage to get away from London for a weekend. When he learned of Kitty’s condition, a fact she couldn’t hide for long after they’d first met, he was neither shocked nor scandalized. He did the honourable thing. ‘Why wait?’ he said. ‘I was planning to ask you after the war, but who knows when that will ever be?’ It had all happened quickly, as things did during a time of war.
They were living in unconventional times and Kitty had always been an unconventional young woman. Even their mother was surprisingly stoic. Howard charmed everyone he met, even the impenetrable Mrs Barbara King. Nobody batted an eyelid when the announcement was posted in the newspaper that Miss Katherine Maria King had married Officer Howard Aidan Keane in a small private ceremony in London. A ring on Kitty’s finger and a husband away at war drew expressions of sympathy for her condition, rather than scorn. As usual, she had landed on her feet, and Alice was very glad to have played a small part in bringing Kitty and Howard together.
‘And what about you?’ Kitty asks, adding a kick to Alice’s foot under the table for good measure. ‘Any word? You’re such a dark horse, Alice King. Really!’
Alice can’t stop the smile that tugs at the edge of her lips. ‘He wrote last week.’
Kitty leans forward and grabs Alice’s hand. ‘Did he declare his undying love for you? Is he miserable and lonely without you?’
Alice laughs. ‘Would it make you happy if I said yes?’
‘Yes!’
‘Then yes, he did.’
It is still the greatest surprise to Alice that it wasn’t Howard Keane, or someone like him, who’d settled in her heart, but Owen Shaw – or Richard Heath, as she had eventually got used to calling him. The war that had brought them together in such dramatic circumstances was now keeping them cruelly apart, but they both firmly believed that time and fate would be on their side, because despite the unexpected development of their romance, there was an undeniable sense of forever about them. In the end, one of the bravest things Alice had done was let go of the safe, steady life she’d always imagined, and embrace the one she hadn’t. Loving Richard certainly feels reckless and unexpected. And wonderful.
After supper that evening, in the flat she and Kitty now share, Alice takes a quiet moment alone to look through the scrapbook of newspaper reports Kitty has kept about the Carlisle tragedy. She comes across a photograph she hasn’t seen before, of their arrival on HMS Aurora. She barely recognizes herself. The forced smile of the woman pictured seems to belong to someone else entirely. The children are smiling and waving as if they’re having the time of their lives, but she knows the truth behind those brave smiles. Yet it is Billy Fortune, the only child not pictured, whom she sees most clearly.
The headline above the photograph says EIGHT DAYS AT SEA – ORDEAL COMES TO MIRACULOUS END! So much was lost and found within those days of hopeful sunrises and the terrifying nights that followed, and while the newspaper reports talk of an ending, for Alice, there is no end. Part of her will always be in the lifeboat, drifting across the Atlantic, hoping for a miracle. It has become a defining feature, as clear as a chickenpox scar or a birthmark. It is more than something that happened to her once. It has become her, is her, always.
But the most curious piece of paperwork from the event is the letter announcing her death. She keeps it between the pages of a new copy of Moby Dick, tucked away at the end of the bookshelf. In quiet moments alone, she sometimes removes the sheet of paper and reads the neatly typed words with a sort of grim reverence: the deepest regrets and sincere condolences, the expression of gratitude for her sacrifice and devotion to duty, the devastating word that sits at the heart of the tragedy. Torpedoed. It will always be a difficult letter to read, and yet for all its talk of death, it speaks to her of life, and how fragile it is. It is a reminder to live, in every sense of the word.
As Kitty potters about in the kitchen, Alice opens the latest letter from Arthur Nicholls. He writes occasionally, mostly to tell her about school and what he’s busy with, but in this letter he writes about their days together in the lifeboat, the stories and songs he remembers, moments of kindness and courage. She can almost taste the salt spray in his sentences, hear the roar of the wind in his words. It takes her back, and propels her forward.
She picks up a pen and a sheet of writing paper.
Dearest Arthur,
Thank you for your lovely letter. I am very pleased to hear that you are enjoying school, and finding lots of new stories to read. I especially like the name you have chosen for your new kitten! I am keeping very busy volunteering with the WVS, but still find time to help out at the library when I can. Uncle Richard (Owen) replied to say he would be thrilled for you to visit him on the Isle of Wight when he is back.
At the start of your letter, you wondered if I would remember you because you haven’t written for a while. My dear Arthur, how could I ever forget you? How could I ever forget any of you?
Warmly,
Auntie Alice x
As she folds the letter and places it inside an envelope ready for posting, the familiar whine of the air-raid siren goes up.
Kitty appears from the kitchen, hands on her hips. ‘Bloody typical. I just poured the tea.’
Alice offers a tired smile.
Life, and war, goes on.
46
London. March 1941
Lily watches at the kitchen window, restless as she waits for Ada to come back from the shops. Her gaze strays to the envelope propped against the milk jug. She can’t bear the thought of what’s inside, but it is for Ada to decide whether to read the letter, or not.
After an age, Ada bustles in through the back door and washes her hands at the sink. ‘That bloody outhouse is cold enough to freeze your bits and pieces off! Is there any tea in the pot?’
Lily doesn’t know what to say.
Ada looks at her. ‘What’s the matter, love? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘They sent a letter, Ada.’
‘Who did?’
‘CORB.’ The word is rarely spoken in the house. It feels leaden, heavy with the legacy of grief it carries. ‘I’m so sorry, Ada. I didn’t know what to do for the best.’
She points to the simple brown envelope propped against the milk jug, Mrs Ada Fortune handwritten on the front. Such an ordinary thing, and yet Lily feels as though her next breath is held within it.
Ada picks it up. ‘What on earth do they want now?’ She reads the letter from CORB first. ‘I have put the letter in the enclosed envelope so that you can read it, or destroy it as you wish …’
Slowly, she removes the enclosed envelope.
Lily makes to leave the kitchen, to give her some privacy, but Ada asks her to stay.
Her hands shake as she takes out a sheet of paper and a small white feather. The silence is excruciating, Ada’s quiet suffering unbearable.
It only takes her a few minutes to read her son’s words. It feels as if it should take a lifetime.
‘Would you come outside with me, Lily? There’s something I need to do.’
They step outside together into the front garden. The breeze tugs impatiently at the feather in Ada’s hand. It dances and twitches, as if it is eager to fly again.
Ada closes her eyes, says something quietly to herself, and with a gasp, she lets go.
Lily places her arm around Ada’s shoulder as they tip their heads back and watch as the breeze carries the feather up and up, beautiful and carefree as it spins and twirls, illuminated by the hopeful light of a spring afternoon.
A blackbird sings on the garden gate. Across the road, Elsie Farnaby tells William to tie his shoelaces before he trips up. Arthur rushes out of the front door, chasing the kitten. Georgie runs after them, laughing.
Lily reaches for Ada’s hand. Somehow, they will lift each other up, carry each other on, because she knows that even in the profound sadness of death, there will always – must always – be a place for the astonishing, enduring beauty of life.
13 September 1940
Dear Mummy,
We are on the big ship now, waiting to set sail! It is very nice. There is lots to eat. I have made a new friend called Arthur, and a nice man called Uncle Howard is looking after us. He can make a real penny appear from our ears! He is helping me write this. We have a life jacket each and the warships will keep us safe from the Germans, so don’t worry.
Goodbye for now, Mummy. Don’t forget to feed the pigeons.
Your loving son,
Billy.
xxxxx
PS Auntie Alice found the feather stuck to my coat. I thought you might like it, to remember me while I’m away.
EPILOGUE
Isle of Wight. September 1950
Alice can’t breathe. The wind snatches her breath away, leaving her gasping for air as she chases her niece across the coloured sand until they fall onto the picnic blanket in a tangle of limbs and laughter.
Howard says they’re both as giddy as spring lambs when they get together. Kitty grumbles about sand going everywhere, but she can’t suppress a smile as she pours them each a glass of water. Madeleine, her daughter, drinks hers in one great gulp. Alice takes a moment before drinking hers.
From the cliff path above, Richard whistles through his fingers.
‘They must be here!’ Alice waves to him and starts to gather up their things.
It still catches her by surprise that this beautiful island is now her home, and that the man she’d spent the worst days of her life with in the lifeboat, she now spends the best days of her life with in their cottage overlooking the sea. And what days they are, cycling between the girls’ school she is now headmistress of, and the bookshop she’d rescued from certain closure in the local town. Her very own bookshop, a neglected sanctuary of stories and words that she’d found on one of her first visits to the island. Or perhaps the bookshop had found her.
