of six months was five months pregnant.
But the getting of that child was not the pleasurable romp she had been led to believe, and her pregnancy was a sick one. As for Lucinda’s birth – she still shuddered just to think of it, and she had prayed that the next one would produce the son she so desperately needed to enable her to call a halt to the whole disagreeable business. But fate intervened and the young Countess of Donnington was thrown from her horse and, badly cut and bruised, lay concussed for two days and nights.
Poor Kitty, everyone said, when she did not conceive again; thank goodness there’s a lesser Bainbridge to carry on the line.
Thank goodness indeed, poor Kitty agreed, and from then on Lady Lucinda, smiling in her pram, and her three-year-old cousin Charles, featured hugely in her future plans. And when they married, thought the Countess happily, the Bainbridge comforts would still be hers to manipulate, provided the Earl popped off first and, as he was fifteen years older, it was almost certain that he would.
‘Well,’ said the Countess, ‘are you to be out on the town again with your wounded soldiers?’
‘Well, they do rather want to take in a show, but we’ll have to see what’s open. Don’t worry, though. If there’s another raid and it gets bad, we’ll go to the nearest tube station. It’s safe enough down there.’
Kitty Bainbridge closed her eyes and shuddered. She had had enough of the blackout and the bombing and the shortages, and if she let herself think too much about the invasion she would become quite ill. It was all too much, waiting for that upstart Hitler to make up his mind; to envisage the Germans strutting down the Mall as they’d strutted down the Champs Élysées. And all because of Poland!
‘Oh, and could I please have the hot-water ration today, Mama? You did have it yesterday and Thursday too, and I must have a bath.’
‘Then you’ll have to take it standing up in cook’s enamel bowl.’ If they’d had a cook! If the wretched woman hadn’t taken herself off to war work in a factory canteen for three times the money, or so she had said. ‘They hit the mains last night with a land mine. No electricity for two days, the gas turned off too, and now no water. It’s beyond belief, it really is. I wonder sometimes what the world is coming to.’
Our world, Mama, Lucinda brooded. Yours and mine. It’s changing, but you won’t accept it. There are no servants now, no seasons in London or Monte, and our lovely, stubborn, precious little island might be invaded any day. France has gone, and Belgium and Holland, and the German army is only a few miles away across the Channel. I know why you are so jumpy, Mama, but you mustn’t think you are the only one who is being put out. This is everybody’s war; we are all suffering and we are all afraid …
‘Look, don’t get upset. It doesn’t matter about the bath.’ It was selfish even to think of one when the fire service needed every drop of water to douse the bombed, blazing buildings. She laid an arm around her mother’s shoulders. ‘You’re tired – everyone is. Why don’t you pack a bag and go to Cromlech? You’d be able to get some sleep up there and –’
‘Scotland? How can I go there? McNair’s living in Cromlech, or had you forgotten?’
McNair, the elderly gillie who had agreed to live as caretaker in the Earl’s shooting lodge. Lady Kitty had been furious, declaring that the man was arrogant enough without giving him licence to sleep in his employer’s bed and sit upon his lavatory.
‘It’s either the McNairs or a dozen bombed-outs from Clydeside, m’dear. Take your pick,’ came the bland retort. The Countess had settled for McNair.
‘Then how about Lady Mead? We’ve still got the Dower House, and Lincolnshire is lovely in May.’ So very lovely, Lucinda remembered.
‘My dear good girl, the Dower House is bursting at the seams with furniture, not to mention Nanny. Besides, there’s no petrol left till the next coupons are due, and I won’t go by train.’
‘Then mightn’t it help keep your mind off things if you took up war work? The WVS ladies are in the tube every night making tea when the sirens go. Or you could drive an ambulance.’
The Countess could not drive an ambulance. For one thing, she couldn’t see a thing in the blackout without her glasses; and for another, the uniform wasn’t half attractive enough. War work? Oh dear, no. It was enough with Donnington’s preoccupation with his Home Guarding and a daughter who thought more of wounded soldiers than she did of family duty.
‘No thank you! No need for us all to go in at the deep end.’
‘Oh, Mama, don’t make it more difficult than it already is. Do please try.’
But Mama would never budge. She had been completely against the war, right from the start. She was, dare her daughter think it, extremely selfish.
‘Look, darling, I got a hunting-pink lipstick yesterday and some rose-geranium soap. I’d hidden them away for your birthday.’ Not strictly true. She had intended using them herself. ‘But if you like you can have them now.’
‘Can I? Oh, Lucinda, what a poppet you are!’
Lucinda sighed. Poppet? Oh, no. She was a fool, that’s what. But at least for a little while Mama would be happy, and keeping Mama happy had become a way of life, almost.
‘I’ll run upstairs and get them,’ she smiled.
Last night too she had waited. She had waited at the beech tree until the sky began to darken and the sudden, distant roar of aircraft engines told her that soon the bombers would be flying again.
She had hugged herself tightly then against the nausea she always felt when Rob was flying and begun her desperate bargaining with God.
It’s Jane, God – Jane Kendal. Rob’s on ops again, so please take care of him and S-Sugar. Don’t let anything happen. Let him come back, oh, please let him come back!
Cold with fear, she had waited for take-off, willing it not to happen, knowing it would.
Take off. To leave the ground. Birds did it all the time with ease and grace, but for the crews of the bombers that flew from Fenton Bishop aerodrome she knew that to take off meant dry-mouthed apprehension and an ice-cold hand that twisted your guts and made you want to throw up the supper you had neither tasted nor enjoyed. In those fearful few moments hands clutched good-luck charms and lips moved in unashamed prayer, until the clunk of the undercarriage as it folded into the belly of the aircraft told them they had made it. Then to each of the heavily loaded bombers that roared over her head Jane had whispered, ‘Good luck. Come back safely,’ and when they were all specks in the distant twilight and the savage pandemonium of their leaving no more than a muted throbbing, she had sent her love high and wide so it would find her lover in that vast, uncaring sky.
‘Take care, Rob. Please take care …’
Eleven bombers had taken off from Fenton Bishop last night, and in the early hours of the morning eleven had come home. Rob was safe. Tonight he would be with her.
The trees were green now with the tender leaves of May, yet when first she knew Rob those trees had been silvered by February frosts. They had met just three months ago, yet now it seemed that the whole of her life had been crammed into those few fleeting weeks; as if her living had had no meaning before they met and her
