CHAPTER 32

She’d hoped, very much, that things were about to be better. The TV programme had definitely had an effect on Christine; it had made her realise what a lucky escape her mother had had. Seeing the size of the crash-again-realising how easily Mary could have been just a few cars farther forward, or even hit by one of the freezers, had sobered her. She was quiet during supper, and when Mary had said good night to her, later, she had kissed her and said, “Night, Mum. Thank goodness you were where you were-on the road, I mean.”

Mary felt more cheerful than she had for a week as she got herself ready for bed.

She had switched on the radio and turned the light out; she was too tired to read, and she liked being lulled to sleep by the well-bred voices of the World Service announcers. But it wasn’t quite time for the World Service, and there was a programme on Radio Two about popular music over the past sixty years. Starting inevitably with the war. And equally inevitably with Vera Lynn, singing “White Cliffs of Dover.”

The hours she’d spent listening to that song. On her gramophone. The gramophone Russell had bought her, as a parting present. She’d been worried her mother would want to know where it had come from and had invented a woman at work who didn’t want it anymore.

“But they’re expensive things, Mary. I’m surprised she didn’t want to sell it.”

“Oh, she’s got a lot of money, Mum.”

“Even so. Well, you’d better look after it.”

As if she wouldn’t: the very last present Russell ever gave her, before going off to Normandy. He’d given her other more personal things, the brooch-that had been easier to explain: she’d said she’d spotted it in the Red Cross jumble sale, and her mother would never know that his eye was a real diamond-and of course all the usual things that the GIs had been able to afford that the British troops couldn’t-like nylons and perfume. And the gramophone record (together with the sheet music) of Vera Lynn singing what she always thought of as the bluebird song.

She’d played it over and over and over again, until it had become too scratched to hear it any longer, and of course it was always on the wireless too, the song that had seen so many romances started-and had kept them alive through the long years of separation. Whenever it was played, when she was with Donald again, married to Donald, but most of all when she was coping with her unhappiness at saying goodbye to Russell, it was him she thought of, whom she could almost feel beside her again, dashing, handsome Russell, with his perfect manners, dancing with her. He’d been a wonderful dancer, not born with two left feet like poor Donald-they had fox-trotted and waltzed, him holding her very close and telling her how lovely she was. They had even jitterbugged together in dance halls like the Lyceum and places like the Café Royal and, most wonderfully of all, Mary had thought, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. It had been closed for ballet and opera performances but, rather surprisingly, was the scene every afternoon for tea dances. They had only gone there once, for Mary was working, but she had been given the afternoon off and met Russell in the Strand, at Lyons Corner House and they had walked together through Covent Garden Market and gone in the wonderful great doors of the Opera House; she had felt like a queen herself.

She had never gone again, never thought of going to a performance there in the years since; it was terribly expensive. But every so often when she was near it, in the Strand or on Waterloo Bridge, she would make a detour and stand outside, looking up at it, and the years would roll away and she would feel Russell’s hand pulling her up the steps and into the red-and-gilt foyer and hear his voice saying, “come along, my lovely Little Sparrow, come and dance with me…”

She lay there in the darkness that night, listening to it and smiling. It seemed a very good sign.

But it wasn’t too much of one, because in the morning, when she said casually at breakfast that Russell had asked if she would like to take Gerry and Christine to his hotel for lunch the next day so that they could meet, Christine’s rather pale face had gone very pink and she said she was sorry, but she didn’t feel she could.

“All right, dear,” said Mary, trying to sound calm, “we’ll leave it for a little while longer. Maybe next weekend?”

“Mum,” said Christine, “you don’t understand. I really don’t want to meet this man. I’d feel terribly disloyal to Dad. I know you don’t see it like that, but I can’t help it. You’re going home in a few days and then you can see him whenever you want to, but meanwhile, please respect my feelings and just… well, leave me out of it.”

That had been too much for Mary; she had gone up to her room and cried. After a while, there was a knock on the door and Gerry came in. He was clearly very embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, Mary. Very sorry. I think it’s… well, very nice that you’ve got this… this friend, and I can’t see Chris’s problem. But you know what she’s like, and she did adore her dad. I’m sure she’ll come round.”

“I hope so,” said Mary.

She blew her nose and thanked Gerry for being so understanding and tried to cheer herself up with the thought that at least she could spend the next day with Russell, and that the following week she’d be home and she could see him whenever she liked. But she felt dreadfully sad.

It got better, of course-much better-when she was in her own home, where she had been now for the past week. In fact, in most ways, it had been, well… perfectly happy. Russell came over every day in the car, or he sent the car for her and she was driven over to Bath; his hotel was absolutely beautiful, and they would wander round the grounds arm in arm, talking, laughing, remembering one minute, looking forward the next.

And Russell had fallen in love with the beautiful countryside around Bath and the lovely houses that lay within it, and now, he said, he meant to show her one, one that he thought she would really like; she had thought he meant something like a National Trust property, perhaps, that they could look around and have lunch in.

So she dressed with particular care, put on the Jaeger suit, the fateful Jaeger suit; Russell was waiting for her on the doorstep and got in beside her, said they could have coffee later, and told Ted, the driver, to go “to the house near Tadwick we saw last night,” and they drove along in silence for about half an hour, Russell’s blue eyes shining as he looked out of the window. Mary could feel his excitement; it was like being with a child on Christmas Eve.

It was a perfect autumn day, golden and cobweb-hung, mists still lying in the small valleys; they were climbing slightly now, and then Russell said “Close your eyes.” She did so obediently, felt the car turn off, slow down, stop. “Open them,” he said, and she did, and saw a narrow lane curving down just a little to the left, with great chestnut trees overhanging it, and at the bottom, there it was: a house, a grey stone house, quite low, just two storeys, with a grey slate roof, tall windows and a wide, white front door, complete with fanlight and overhung with wisteria. At the right-hand end it bowed out into what Mary would have described-not knowing any architectural terms-as an extra bit, and which Russell-who seemed strong on architectural terms-described as a friendship. They drove down towards the house; Ted pulled outside the front door and they got out.

It was very quiet, very still, the only sound wood pigeons, and somewhere behind the house the wonderfully real, reassuring sound of a lawn mower.

“It’s lovely,” she said. “Does it belong to a friend of yours?”

“You could say so. Knock on the door; let’s see if we can go in.”

The door had a lion’s-head knocker; it was so heavy, Mary could hardly lift it.