The Last Lifeboat, page 5
‘Punctual at least,’ the woman in front said. ‘Hope it won’t take long. We’ve to be at the doctor at eleven. We spend more time in that bloody surgery than we do at home! Sometimes a bad start in life never leaves you, does it? Well, good luck to them, and to you Mrs …’
‘Nicholls. Lily Nicholls. And good luck to you as well, Mrs …’
‘Fortune. Ada Fortune.’
Lily hoped Ada Fortune was aptly named when it came to sending her five children away.
The heat inside the CORB offices was even worse than outside. There wasn’t a breath of air and not a window open. A nauseating cocktail of stale cigarette smoke, cheap Woolworth’s perfume and Johnson’s polishing wax turned Lily’s stomach as she approached the front desk. A woman with flushed cheeks and a clipboard instructed her to take a form, a pen, and a seat.
‘Anywhere?’
The woman looked at Lily as if she had three heads. ‘Preferably on one of the seats, dear.’
Fifty identical chairs were neatly arranged in five rows of ten. The thirteen women ahead of Lily had dutifully filled the first thirteen chairs, one beside another, but Lily made her way to the back of the room. She needed privacy.
She fussed and fidgeted and shifted her weight, crossing and uncrossing her legs to try to get comfortable, but the lining of her skirt stuck to the back of her legs whichever way she sat. Balancing the paper form on top of the Woman’s Weekly on her knees, she began to fill out the necessary information for Georgie and Arthur: full name, date of birth, address, school attended, medical history, religion. There were boxes to be ticked, declarations to be signed, small print to be read. She hesitated over the section that asked for her marital status. She hated the word ‘widow’ and what it meant, hated the blunt finality of it. She ticked the box and moved on to the occupation of the parents. Housewife and domestic help was simple enough, but what should she put for Peter? She settled on Signwriter, and added (deceased). The word reminded her of a corpse laid out, bookended by a head and feet.
She carried on with the rest of the form, crossing out and correcting silly mistakes, her mind a turmoil of decision and indecision, action and inaction.
Tear the form up, Lily. Walk out and go home.
Fill the form in, Lily. It’s for the best.
The office was uncomfortably quiet, the monotonous click-clack of typewriter keys, and the occasional cough the only sounds as Lily completed the form and then read it over, twice, to make sure nothing had been missed, or misunderstood. Even then, she sat for a while, waiting for a moment of absolute certainty, but like so many other things, certainty was in short supply during a war. The best she could manage was a sense of resignation to finish what she’d started and try to make her peace with it.
She walked back to the front desk, conscious of the damp patch of sweat on the back of her skirt, and handed the paperwork to the young woman who’d opened the office doors. A badge pinned to her blouse introduced her as Katherine King. She offered a warm ruby-lipped smile and told Lily she was lucky to have got ahead of the queue.
‘They’ll close the doors well before lunchtime at this rate,’ she said as she applied an official stamp to Lily’s form with a sickening thud. ‘Never seen anything like it!’
‘Is that it?’ Lily asked. Her hands fell to her sides as all the tension she’d carried with her from Clapham that morning dissipated like air from a burst tyre.
Miss King was already reaching behind Lily for the next person’s form. ‘Yes, that’s it, Mrs …’ she cast a cursory glance at the paperwork, ‘Nicholls. That’s all. You’ll be notified in writing if the application is successful, and you’ll be advised of further procedures then. Next there, please.’
That’s it, Lily thought as she made her way back out into the glaring sunlight. That’s all.
‘All done, Mrs Nicholls?’ Ada Fortune was already outside, smoking a cigarette beneath the welcome shade of a plane tree.
‘Yes, all done.’ Lily walked over to join her.
‘Have to hope for the best now, I suppose. I haven’t told the kiddies yet. Don’t want to get their hopes up, just in case.’
Lily thought about the many conversations she’d had with Georgie and Arthur about evacuation. Georgie especially was desperate to head off somewhere exciting, like her schoolfriends’ well-off cousins. Arthur just liked the thought of being a seavac and being on a real ship.
‘I wish they would let parents go with them,’ Lily said. ‘It would make it all a lot easier to stomach.’
Ada Fortune laughed. ‘Not for me! I get seasick just looking at the Thames! Besides, they won’t want their mothers fussing over them all the time. The escorts they’re hiring will be much better suited to the job. More functional. Less emotional.’
Lily couldn’t agree. There could surely be nobody better suited to travel with the children than their own mothers. ‘But what are we supposed to do in the meantime?’ she said. ‘What’s our job until the children come back?’
Ada Fortune stubbed out her cigarette with the toe of her scuffed shoe, patted Lily’s arm, and looked her straight in the eye. ‘Our job is to stay alive, love. Our job is to make sure we’re still here when they come back.’
The words crept along Lily’s skin like a chill. That was the thing that terrified her the most, because people didn’t always come back, even when they promised, even when you wanted them to more than anything in the world.
That night, Lily dreamed that the children were trapped beneath the rubble of their bombed-out home. She woke in a sweat and instinctively reached for Peter’s hand for reassurance. She flinched at the touch of the cold bed sheets. It’s freezing, Lil. Go inside and get warm. I’ll write when I’m at the training camp.
She could still hear the familiar squeak of the garden gate as he’d closed it behind him. The squeaky gate was as much a part of their marriage as the rings on their fingers. ‘I’ll fix that when I get back,’ he’d said, just as he did every day when he went off to work. It was a joke they shared. A pattern, repeating. But unlike on every other day, Peter wouldn’t come home that evening. His papers had come through. He was headed to war. He hated the thought of it with every bone in his body, hated what it had done to his father after he’d returned from the Somme, and what that, in turn, had done to him and his mother, but he refused to object like the pacifists and COs. Peter couldn’t bear the thought of killing another man, enemy or not, but he believed it was his duty to fight, just as it was his father’s duty before him, and his grandfather’s before that.
People like Mrs Hopkins, who’d lost husbands and loved ones of their own, said time was a great healer, but the more Lily tried to adjust to life without Peter, the more present he became. Everywhere she went, he was there. Everything she thought, he thought too. Every question she asked, he answered. He was everywhere and nowhere. She was Mrs Peter Nicholls and Lily Elizabeth Harris, plaits swinging at her back as she played hopscotch in the street, a smile on her lips as the boy called Peter walked by, because she knew he would ask her to marry him one day, and she knew she would say yes.
1 November 1939
Wedding anniversary! Opened the Christmas sherry, danced in the kitchen, made love like young fools (one benefit to the children being evacuated) and promised that whatever happens we’ll always dance and make love and drink the Christmas sherry in November. Life can’t stop just because there’s a war on. Moments and memories and days like this are surely what we’re fighting for.
Mass-Observation, Diarist #6672
7
Kent. July 1940
‘There’s a letter here, addressed to you, Alice. It looks rather formal. Who on earth would be writing to you?’
Alice took the envelope from her mother. She opened it, read the letter inside once over, returned it to the envelope, and excused herself from the breakfast table.
‘Where are you going? Alice! You haven’t even finished your porridge. Alice!’
Her mother’s capacity to screech was one of many things Alice was eager to escape. Ignoring her, she grabbed her sunhat from the back of the pantry door.
‘Where are you going in such a rush? We’re supposed to be planning the fundraising lunch together. What on earth’s got into you this morning?’
‘I’m needed early at the library, Mother. I’ll see you later.’
It was true. She was needed early at the library. A delivery was due from London and it was all-hands-on deck to get everything catalogued and stored. Alice always looked forward to opening the wooden packing crates to see what had arrived. She loved the musty smell of old leather-bound volumes, the crackle of the pages, the embossed lettering beneath her fingertips, but the items she handled that day didn’t hold their usual charm. She was distracted and made silly mistakes, her thoughts preoccupied by the letter in her pocket:
I am very pleased to inform you that your application for the voluntary position of escort with the CORB evacuation scheme has been approved, further to a satisfactory interview and medical examination which will be conducted at the CORB offices at the time and date specified below …
Maud could tell there was something on Alice’s mind. ‘You’re either in love or in trouble,’ she said.
Alice reassured Maud that it was neither. ‘I don’t want to say too much, because it might all come to nothing yet, but I applied as a volunteer with the new overseas evacuation scheme. There’s a chance I might be escorting the seavacs.’ It felt strange to say it out loud. She felt immensely proud, and more than a little nauseous.
Maud put down the pile of books in her arms and grabbed Alice’s hands. ‘That’s marvellous news! I can’t think of anyone better.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes! Really! I’ll miss you terribly, but this is perfect for you, Alice. To be honest, I think you’re wasted here, stuffing books on shelves. You’re a natural with children. You’re exactly the sort of person I’d want to keep my kiddies safe if I was a parent.’
It was the vote of confidence Alice needed. ‘Actually, would you mind if I popped out for a bit? I haven’t told Walter yet.’ She needed his steady reassurance now more than ever.
Maud insisted she go and tell him immediately. ‘And I don’t want to see you back here again today. Go and have fun with your brother. This lot can wait.’
She found Walter repairing a fence at the far end of the farm. He read the letter from CORB with a grin on his face. ‘Blimey! You’re off on the high seas then. What does Mother have to say about it?’
‘Haven’t told her yet. She’ll only find a way to spoil it. Besides, there’s no point saying anything until the formalities are done. Just in case.’
‘Surely even Mother won’t be able to find anything disagreeable about this. She’s been on at you for an age to do something. I think it’s bloody brilliant.’
‘So you think I should go? It’s all a bit daunting now that it’s official.’
Walter smiled at her in that lopsided way that was so like their father. ‘I think you’re already halfway there. As for daunting? Show me anything worthwhile that isn’t.’
As usual, he was a rock of common sense. Alice took the letter from him and read it again. It was so matter of fact for something that felt so significant.
‘You’re braver than you think, Alice,’ Walter added, sensing her hesitation. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you turned out to be the bravest of us all.’
She nudged Walter’s shoulder. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not being silly. I’m deadly serious.’
Alice pulled her cardigan around her shoulders as the breeze picked up and sent a chill down her back. She didn’t feel brave. If she were being honest, she would tell Walter she was terrified. Over recent weeks, she’d read the newspaper with an increasing sense of dread. Churchill’s Battle of Britain had begun in earnest, with dramatic aerial dogfights now taking place over the English Channel and across the south coast counties. Casualty numbers were creeping up on both sides, yet the newspapers and the BBC wireless reports kept the news cheery and hopeful, talking of victories and celebrating ‘our brave boys in blue’.
‘I’ll miss you though,’ Walter added.
It was the second time that morning she’d been told she would be missed. Alice had been in Whitstable, at Willow Cottage, for so long that she’d never given anyone a reason to miss her, although she understood all too well the ache of absence, the unfathomable void left behind by those departed.
After a frustrating delay, the final confirmation of Alice’s appointment as a CORB escort eventually arrived at the end of a difficult week at the library. Three entire shelves of books in Gardening had been damaged by a burst water pipe, and then an unpleasant woman borrowing several romance novels had felt it necessary to remind Alice how ashamed she should be of her brother, and that, ‘he should be up there, fighting with the rest of them’. That was the thing about war. It was everyone’s business, a uniquely shared experience, and it made personal responses to it everybody’s business, too.
As the Battle of Britain intensified over the English Channel and Kent’s orchards, Alice’s days were accompanied by the background noise of aerial dogfights. The brave RAF pilots, scrapping it out with the Luftwaffe, were idolized by the local boys who couldn’t get enough of the Hurricanes and Spitfires looping and turning with such speed and dexterity. It was thrilling Boy’s Own stuff, and Alice hated it: the ominous hum of approaching enemy planes, the rat-a-tat-a-tat of machine gun fire, the rising pitch of an engine as another damaged plane plummeted to the ground. The sound haunted her.
She checked the post every day, but still nothing arrived from CORB. She’d passed her medical with a perfect bill of health, and had got along well with the lead escort during a rather nerve-wracking interview, but when Kitty had told her that sailings were indefinitely postponed due to a shortage of naval escort ships, Alice had almost given up on the evacuations going ahead altogether. So, when the final acceptance letter arrived, it felt less like an obligation to play her part in the war, and more like a very welcome invitation.
Her heart raced as she read the instructions. She was required to report to the ballroom of the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on the tenth of September, where she would be given further information about the ship and the route she would be sailing on. It was all unexpectedly thrilling, and although it felt wrong to be enthusiastic about escorting children away from their homes and families, Alice couldn’t suppress her good mood. Finally, she had a sense of purpose, a clear direction to travel in. There was just one obstacle remaining: her mother. And that was a threat of an entirely different kind.
She decided to announce her news over dinner that evening. Walter was coming over, and he would help take some of the sting out of their mother’s inevitable response. To take her mind off it until then, she busied herself in the garden and cleaned out the chicken coop, smiling to herself as she thought about Kitty holding her nose and calling it the smelliest job in the world. Dear Kitty. Alice would miss her terribly.
‘Surprise!’
Alice jumped and turned around. ‘Kitty! What are you doing here? Did somebody die?’
‘I came to see my family. Is that so very odd?’
‘Yes! You never visit unless you have to.’ Alice stepped out of the chicken coop, brushed herself down, and gave her sister a hug. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’
‘And it isn’t so lovely to smell you!’
Kitty was a vision in mint green. Alice felt like a dock worker beside her in her scruffy old boiler suit. ‘There is a war on, you know, Kitty. You could at least try to look thrifty.’
Kitty laughed, but there wasn’t the usual brightness to her.
‘Actually, your timing is perfect,’ Alice said. ‘I’ve something to tell you.’
‘I’ve something to tell you, too.’ Kitty hesitated. ‘You go first. Mine can wait.’
‘I suspect you might already know.’ Alice pulled the letter from her pocket and held it up. ‘I’m a fully approved CORB escort. Shipping out in a few weeks!’ She waited for Kitty’s reaction and was disappointed when it didn’t come. ‘Well? What do you think? It was partly because of you telling me to listen to that wireless programme with Anthony Quinn. I listened, applied, and—’
Kitty burst into tears and threw her arms around Alice’s neck.
‘Kitty? Whatever’s the matter? I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘I am pleased. You’ll be perfect! I hoped you would apply but I didn’t want to suggest it, in case you thought I was interfering like everyone else. You’ll be marvellous!’
‘Then why are you crying?’ It really wasn’t like Kitty to be so emotional.
Kitty brushed the tears from her cheeks. ‘Ignore me. I’m being silly. I’ll miss you, that’s all.’
Alice smiled. ‘No you won’t. You’re far too busy having fun in London with Terry, or whatever his name is. Come on. Let me get tidied up and we can go for a stroll along the harbour. Mother will be delighted to see you.’
Kitty looped her arm through Alice’s. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’
Before dinner, Alice took a moment alone in her father’s study. She opened the heavy oak door and stepped inside. The sun didn’t reach that side of the house until late evening and the room retained a coolness, even on warm days. Despite the many years that had passed, the air still carried a trace of him, the unmistakeable scent of pipe smoke and Swan’s shoe polish. It was a room suspended in time, a museum exhibit to be displayed but never touched. The chessboard was still set up for a new game. It was almost twenty years since Alice had moved one of those precious pieces, and yet part of her was still an impatient little girl, studying the board, waiting for her father to make his move.
