Chapter 25 Lilias
Lilias
Ruth was sitting in the window seat wrapped in her shawl, gazing out at the rain. Lilias glanced up from the letter she was reading to look at her.
“I have to go up to town next week,” she said, her tone carefully casual. “Bill Cartwright wants to see me about something. You remember Daddy’s old army friend?”
“Gosh, yes, I remember,” Ruth replied with the briefest of glances. “Big moustache; crushing bore?”
“That’s a bit unfair,” said Lilias. “I always thought him quite sweet, actually.”
“That’s because, for some unaccountable reason, you were always interested in what he and Daddy had to say to each other.”
“Their conversations were interesting, that’s why. At least, they were to me. But if you don’t want me to go, I can put him off. I’m sure he could put whatever it is in a letter.”
Ruth sighed and shook her head, as Lilias had hoped she would. “No, it’s all right, you go. In fact, I’ve been thinking I ought to get away somewhere myself, if I can summon the energy. I might foist myself on Cousin Edith in Devon if she’ll have me.”
Lilias folded her letter and went to kiss her sister’s cheek. “I think that’s an excellent plan, Ruthie. A change of scenery will do you the world of good.”
Ruth yawned and pushed herself up from the window seat with a wan smile.
“Yes, I’m sure it will. I shall return to Norfolk completely healed, just as if Gloria never existed, ready for the next exciting chapter of my life.
” She caught sight of Lilias’s stricken expression and sighed again.
“Oh, gosh, listen to me. What an utter bitch I am, when I know full well I’m not the only person to have lost someone. ”
Lilias quickly turned away. “Please, don’t.”
Since Harry’s disappearance she had resisted all Ruth’s attempts to get her to talk about it.
Talking about it wouldn’t bring him back if he didn’t want to be found.
Talking about it wouldn’t undo what they had done together that night.
And neither would it do any good at all to confide in Ruth about her fears.
Ruth sighed. “All right,” she said. “Have it your way. But, Lily, when you do feel able to talk about things, I’ll be ready to listen. Only you may have to track me down, because I plan to do something useful with myself. Who knows? I may even join the Wrens.”
“That’s an excellent idea, Ruth. You’d make a great Wren.” Yes, Lilias could absolutely imagine Ruth joining the Women’s Royal Naval Service.
Ruth shrugged. “Maybe. I only know that if it had been me blown to smithereens, Gloria wouldn’t have been sat on her backside staring out at the rain.
It’s time I stopped being such a complete flake and causing you so much worry.
I shall start with a trip to Devon and take it from there.
I’m going to write to Cousin Edith straightaway.
” And she squeezed Lilias’s hand and left the room.
Alone, Lilias unfolded the letter from her father’s friend and reread it.
She had been slightly economical with the truth about its contents in her conversation with Ruth.
Bill Cartwright hadn’t mentioned their meeting up the following week, or at any particular time at all.
His invitation had been couched in the vaguest of terms.
Should you find yourself up in town over the next few months, there is something I should very much like to discuss with you . . .
It was intriguing, and it happened to suit Lilias’s plans exactly. She needed to visit a discreet doctor, someone far away from the village. And the only likely candidate she could think of happened to be in London, so London it was, and as soon as possible.
So, while Ruth was upstairs penning her letter to their cousin, Lilias sat at her mother’s bureau and wrote a reply to Bill Cartwright, asking whether he was free to meet the following Tuesday.
Once she had finished, she folded the letter and addressed an envelope.
By the time Ruth came down with her own letter, the rain had stopped, and the sun was trying to come out.
“Come along,” Lilias said, handing her sister her coat. “Let’s go straight to the post office with our letters.”
Ruth reluctantly agreed, and they emerged from the garden gate to be greeted by a double rainbow.
“One each,” Ruth observed wryly, her arm linked with Lilias’s.
“But don’t try and tell me it’s a sign that Gloria’s looking down on me from heaven or any of that balderdash.
If there were a heaven, there would also be a God, and there can’t be a God, because if there were one, He couldn’t just sit back and let us do such beastly things to each other. ”
Lilias smiled sympathetically and squeezed her sister’s arm, but in her mind she was thinking that it wasn’t the rainbow that was a sign, but the letter her sister was holding, ready to post. The letter was a sign that Ruth’s grief hadn’t entirely wiped out her fighting spirit, and as such, it was very welcome.
And, as her own letter plopped into the postbox immediately after Ruth’s, Lilias asked herself how her own fighting spirit was doing.
For she had a distinct feeling she was going to need every scrap of it in the months ahead.
And suddenly she missed her little dog so much it hurt.
“It’s very harsh not knowing what’s become of Compass,” she said. “If he were here, I’d go for a good long walk. But without him I somehow haven’t the heart for it.”
“Come along,” said Ruth, taking her arm. “Let’s walk over to Lavender Cottage and light a fire. It will be good to have a change of scene.”
Lilias removed her arm to adjust her hat, pulling it further down over her ears. “No,” she said. “I don’t want to go there. It reminds me of . . . Compass. In fact, when this war is over, I may well sell it, if you have no objection.”
Ruth looked surprised. “Of course not. But I thought you loved the place?”
“I did. I . . . do. But things change. Minds change.” Lilias smiled tightly. “Perhaps it’s time for a new start. Come along, let’s get home.”
Cousin Edith, whose husband was away fighting, replied to Ruth’s letter by return post, enthusiastically accepting Ruth’s request to stay for a few weeks.
“Oh, golly,” said Ruth doubtfully, reading the gushing descriptions of everything Edith would arrange for her while she was in Devon. “I shan’t have a moment to myself. Could I claim sudden illness and cancel, do you think?”
“That would be mean of you. Edith’s clearly lonely without Frederick. And the fresh air will do you good.”
“I don’t imagine the air is any fresher in Devon than in Norfolk,” Ruth grumbled, but two days later, she went to Devon, anyway, her suitcase weighed down with two precious jars of damson jam from the larder as a gift to Edith.
“Write and tell me what Bill Cartwright has to say,” she told Lilias from the train window.
“I will,” promised Lilias. “Have a good rest. And write back to me!”
She watched her sister’s pale face until it disappeared from view, then closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath as she fought to compose herself.
For, with Ruth gone, there was no one to focus on but herself; no distraction to stop her from facing her thoughts.
Since it had been such a very long time since this had been the case, it felt oddly unnerving.
Standing amongst the hubbub of passengers and smoke, Lilias longed for her mother.
How serene she had always been; how calm and how sure.
If Lilias had a problem or a decision to make, her mother had always listened carefully, her head tilted to one side.
And then she had dispensed her advice; advice which had always been designed to help Lilias see into her own heart.
Tears prickled behind Lilias’s eyes, escaping down her cheeks.
She reached up quickly to wipe them away, although, in reality, she was one of many who was crying on the station platform.
With war, tearful departures had become the norm rather than the exception.
But Lilias was willing to bet she was the only forty-two-year-old on the platform who was crying for her mother some ten years after her death.
You are strong, my darling, she imagined her mother saying to her. You are strong, and you are very much loved.
Bill Cartwright was waiting for her at their table when she got to the Ritz the following Tuesday.
“Lilias, my dear,” he said, getting to his feet to kiss her, smelling of the same cigars her father had smoked. “How very good to see you. I imagine London must have come as something of a shock to you if you haven’t travelled down since the beginning of the war?”
Lilias was still feeling shell shocked after her appointment at the doctor’s that morning, but somehow managed to find sufficient resources to respond. “Yes, indeed,” she agreed, taking the seat he held out for her. “And yet there very much seems to be a fighting spirit.”
“Oh yes,” Bill agreed. “The bombs have eased off a bit lately, thank goodness, but we Londoners are still spending a lot of nights in the shelters. Did you pass the little barber’s shop on your way from the Underground station?
All its windows blown out, but still open for business.
And this hotel has some very eminent guests, I’ll have you know.
European royalty, some of them. It operates as a sort of high-class bomb shelter.
But you’re looking a trifle pale, my dear. Don’t you get any sunshine in Norfolk?”
Lilias hadn’t noticed the barber’s shop, or any details of her journey to the hotel from the doctor’s office.
Or, for that matter, what the weather had been like lately.
Nothing much at all, in fact, since that morning when an awful truth had begun to grow in her mind.
A truth that had, this morning, been confirmed.
“Yes,” she said politely, “it has been rather cloudy of late.”
“Cloudy all over Europe, I should say. Here, let me help you with your coat.”
“Thank you.”