Chapter 21 #2
Stella looked at Mr C for guidance. He shrugged. It was a kind and generous offer, she thought. And there might come a time when she needed to flee the city, and she might be able to persuade Mr C to come too. For them to have a safe place –
‘All right,’ she said. ‘It can’t do any harm to have a look, can it?’
Edwin nodded. ‘Pack warm clothes. Hat, scarf, gloves. It can be a bit nippy.’
Stella stood outside the station the next morning, underneath where her poster had been.
It had disappeared, replaced with something much more ominous.
Over a million children had been evacuated from London, but some families were bringing their children home, against all advice.
The poster showed a shadowy Hitler urging ‘take them back’ and a mother wrestling with the dilemma.
Don’t do it, Mother. Leave the children where they are, read the slogan.
What would she do? wondered Stella. It would be awful to send your child off to the depths of the countryside to an unknown family, but that was better than putting their lives at risk, surely?
She saw a yellow sportscar pull up in front of her. There he was. She tried not to acknowledge the flip in her stomach. This was a fact-finding mission. An act of kindness. Nothing more.
He tucked her in under a scratchy tartan rug, for it was draughty in the car because of the canvas hood, the wind whistling in where it didn’t quite fit.
She felt like a queen as they drove up Regent Street to Piccadilly, past Fortnum’s and the Ritz, and if you half shut your eyes and ignored the fact that the railings in Hyde Park had been taken down to be sent off to munitions factories, and the air-raid shelters that had been put up near Park Lane, it could be a normal day in the West End, double decker buses trundling along and people out shopping without a care in the world.
They flew past Harrods – ‘My brother’s godmother, Alexandra, lives just behind, and uses Harrods like a corner shop,’ Edwin told her – and soon they were on their way along the A4, past Windsor, and onwards down to Somerset.
A weak autumn sun had deigned to come out when they reached Breverton, bathing the little high street in rose-gold. It was Saturday lunchtime, and people beetled in and out of the shops. Stella was enchanted.
‘It’s like a fairy tale!’
Edwin looked at her quizzically. ‘It’s just a sleepy Somerset town.’
‘I don’t get out of London much. To Essex, sometimes. I used to go to the countryside as often as I could, to draw. But it’s not like this. Imagine living here!’
He laughed. ‘You might get bored. There’s no dance halls. Not even a cinema.’
‘I would never get bored.’ Stella sighed in delight.
How little she knew about the world, she realised.
The furthest she had ever been was Brighton, with a man who had promised her the world, but only managed to offer her a cold sea, a hard pebble beach and a night of anti-climax in a dreary bed and breakfast. She had ditched him soon after and not ventured out with anyone else since.
Better to be on your own than to sleep with a walking disappointment.
At the far end of the high street, he turned off down a lane that ran alongside the canal. It was lined with tiny houses, and at the far end of them was a small field. He pulled in and parked, then jumped out and grabbed her case.
‘We have to walk from here, I’m afraid. It’s not too far. Bring the rug.’
She followed him along the towpath, mystified. They must have walked for nearly a quarter of a mile before a brightly coloured narrowboat appeared, painted green and gold.
‘My floating palace,’ he said proudly.
‘That’s not what I was expecting,’ she exclaimed. ‘Is it yours?’
He nodded. ‘I bought it last year off a bloke in the Trout who needed some cash. It’s my hideaway.
No one else knows about it, not even my family.
It’s where I go when I want to get away from it all.
I sleep and paint and watch the canal go by.
You should see it in summer. Kingfishers, dragonflies, voles, swans … ’
‘Penelope,’ Stella read the name along the side in golden letters.
‘It’s yours to escape to, whenever you want, if things get too dangerous in London.
You and Mr C. Wait till you see inside.’ He leapt on board and headed for the door of the cabin, unlocking it.
She followed him down some rickety steps, into a long room barely six foot wide.
The floor, walls and ceiling were lined with burnished wood, and it was kitted out with everything needed for life on board: a tiny kitchen with cupboards and a pull-down table, a pot-bellied stove, a run of benches covered in cushions, and at the end, a raised platform with a mattress.
‘It’s like a gypsy caravan!’ exclaimed Stella.
‘It’s a wonderful piece of craftsmanship.’ Edwin ran his hands along the wood. ‘It might be cramped but there’s a place for everything.’ He lifted up a cushion on one of the benches and pulled up a lid to show storage underneath.
‘Not cramped,’ said Stella. ‘Cosy.’
‘It will be once I’ve got the fire going.’ He pulled open the door of the stove and began to pile wood inside.
She looked around the cabin more closely.
The curtains were in striped fabric like a deck chair, and the bed was covered in blankets and cushions, making a very tempting nest. There was a row of books, a shelf stacked with art materials, a cupboard full of tins and a considerable number of bottles – wine and brandy and beer.
Some of Edwin’s sketches were pinned to the wall. It was the perfect artist’s hideaway.
Once he’d got the fire going, he stood up.
‘Make yourself at home. Help yourself to whatever you want. I changed the bed sheets last time I left.’ He nodded over to the bunk.
‘Oh, and there’s plenty to eat in here.’ He picked up the small basket he’d brought with him.
‘Ham. Cheese. Bread. Fruit cake. Tuck in. I’ll come back and fetch you in the morning. ’
For a moment, she felt as if she was being secreted away, rather, but she told herself it was the boat that was a secret, not her. Although what would his family, and his fiancée, say, if they knew Stella was here?
It was perfectly above board, she told herself. It was a kind gesture, to offer this hideaway to her and Mr C, and it was a comfort to know it was here, even if they would probably never take him up on his offer.
It was so quiet once Edwin had gone. Stella had never been somewhere so peaceful.
She stepped out onto the deck, looking up at the still, grey sky that was the same colour as the flat surface of the water.
She breathed in deeply, sweet air that held not a trace of traffic fumes or smog, just the sharpness of the smoke coming from the chimney.
Overhead, the bare branches swayed, almost the only movement on this cold winter afternoon.
She could immediately understand why he loved it here.
There was nothing to distract you, just a silent beauty.
She felt all her worries recede. Usually they were nibbling away at the corners of her mind, but suddenly it was as still as the canal.
She went back inside and pulled a sketch pad off the shelf, and a selection of pencils. Then she sat on the deck and began to draw. She was completely lost in her task, and all she could hear was Monsieur Corbières’ voice in her head: It’s not what you put in, it’s what you leave out.
This was the first chance she’d had for a long time to concentrate on her children’s stories.
She was hopng to see if she could get them published in a magazine, but she needed a decent body of work before she could even think about sending them off.
She was going to spend this weekend planning them out.
Mr C had encouraged her, helping her work out how much detail to put in each picture to help illustrate the story, how to develop a style that was consistent – she had so much to learn!
As the light began to fade, the sky began to fill with a flock of birds that appeared as if from nowhere, pouring out of the clouds above her head.
She had never seen so many, and they seemed to multiply before her very eyes, hundreds of them, swooping and swirling in an elaborate dance, like iron filings twitching around a magnet.
Was this a portent? Was it the end of the world?
Did they know something? She shivered, realising the temperature had dropped sharply in the past few minutes, but she couldn’t tear herself away from the display.
Suddenly it was over. They melted into the trees, the last of the light faded, and the world was almost black.
She hurried back inside to find the fire had gone out.
With frozen fingers, she lit it again. The silence she had relished earlier was unsettling.
The lamps threw sinister shadows onto the walls.
She realised she had no idea of the time, for she wasn’t wearing a watch, and there didn’t seem to be a clock.
Panic rose up inside her, and the urge to flee, but the dark outside was too terrifying.
If she needed to run for help, where would she go?
Back up the towpath to Breverton in the pitch-dark?