Chapter 21
It was gone eleven o’clock that night before Stella and Ted rolled into Breverton station – they’d caught the last train and it was the slow train, stopping off at all the tiny stations.
Ted had curled up on the seat and managed to snooze, but Stella’s brain wouldn’t allow her to doze off.
The unaccustomed wine had given her a thick head, so her thoughts felt sluggish as the events of the day played themselves back to her.
Her elation was wearing off. Nothing was written in stone, and she had a lot of work to do, with no guarantee that Harriet would like what she had done.
Surely if she’d liked The Towpath Gang that much she’d have signed her up straight away?
She hurried Ted out of the station and along the high street until they reached the bridge over the canal where they dropped down onto the towpath.
As the lights of the town faded behind them, she switched on her torch.
The beam was getting weak, flickering half-heartedly, and her heart sank.
She’d meant to replace the battery the week before, but in her excitement at the trip ahead she’d completely forgotten.
Five minutes later it gave out altogether. She couldn’t believe how dark it was. Clouds were covering the moon and stars, and it was almost impossible to make out the towpath ahead.
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ said Ted. ‘I can see in the dark. I’m like a cat.’
She put her arm around his shoulders and hugged him.
Her plucky and kind little boy knew she needed reassurance.
They inched forwards along the muddy path, huddling into their coats as an insistent night breeze whipped up, bringing along with it the first few drops of rain.
Ted was starting to cough, and she hoped it was just the damp air and not the nasty cough of last winter coming back already.
She used the still water of the canal on their right to guide her along the path, hurrying as fast as she could.
She needed to get him inside, get him dry and light the fire.
How could she have felt so elated earlier?
This was her truth. She was all alone, bringing up Ted, living on a shoestring, only just able to keep them fed, clothed and warm, cutting herself off from anyone who might be considered a friend.
She felt a rush of anger towards Edwin. How dare he die and leave her like this?
She should have trusted her gut, and not succumbed to him in the first place.
She was a fool to ignore her instincts. All her antennae had told her getting involved with a man like him would be bad news for her.
But then she wouldn’t have Ted. The true love of her life.
And at least on the boat she felt near Edwin, even if he was gone.
She had to believe in herself. She had to believe her luck would change, that Edwin hadn’t been a mistake, that she’d been lucky to have him in her life, if only fleetingly, those few precious meetings snatched in a time of huge conflict when everyone’s lives had been turned upside down.
Finally they reached the boat. The canal was shrouded in a freezing fog that seemed to have made its way inside, and the windows were dripping.
Ted was coughing non-stop. Stella told him to get out of his wet things while she lit the stove and put the kettle on top to make him a warm drink and fill a hot-water bottle.
Her fingers were so cold she could hardly strike a match.
Eventually, she got it alight and helped Ted into his pyjamas.
How selfish of her, she thought, to go gallivanting with Harriet when she should have got them both back on an earlier train.
She’d got completely carried away thinking she was some bohemian literary type who swanned about Bloomsbury and drank wine at lunchtime. What a fool.
‘Keep your socks on and put your jumper back on then snuggle into bed, sweetheart,’ she said.
If he got a decent night, he might be all right in the morning, although it was nearly midnight now, and she didn’t think the snooze he’d had on the train counted towards the hours of sleep a growing boy needed.
She slid the hot-water bottle onto his side of the bed and got herself undressed.
She would never normally light the stove this late at night and leave it burning, but this was a one-off.
Somehow, even though it was Arctic, the milk had gone off, plopping into the cups of tea she’d made in rancid dollops. She threw them out. The sheets were like ice when she got into bed. Ted was shivering violently. It was impossible to get warm when you’d got this cold.
Oh God. She missed him so much her bones ached.
Or was that the cold? She longed to feel his arms around her, the warmth of him.
She shut her eyes tight and prayed for sleep.
You can do it, she told herself. You can change things for the better.
You’ve been given a chance. It’s up to you to take it.
Edwin had promised this boat would keep her safe, whatever happened.
After Edwin told her he was engaged, Stella kept him at arm’s length every time he came into the shop. The first time he visited, Stella had been in the stockroom and had heard Mr C give him a dressing down.
‘I had no idea you were betrothed,’ he’d stormed. ‘I would never have let Stella go for dinner with you if I’d known. That is not the behaviour of a gentleman. You are lucky I am not banning you from the shop.’
Edwin had been suitably shame-faced, and had sent her a long letter from his posting in Scotland, apologising profusely, with lots of funny drawings that made her laugh.
So she’d had to forgive him. She wrote back her own illustrated letter, showing him sketches from the idea she’d had for a children’s story.
His response was enthusiastic, and they fell into the habit of writing to each other by return of post.
She knew she was flirting with danger, for every time she saw his writing on an envelope that landed on the doormat in her boarding house, she felt hot inside, as if she might explode.
She would snatch the letter up and run to the bedroom, for she needed to be alone with her thoughts.
Very alone. Even though all he wrote about was how cold it was, and how much fun the sailors were, and what he was drawing. Nothing intimate.
The letters brightened the monotony of war. She knew from the preparations at the fire station that bombing could start at any moment. They were never, ever to get complacent.
‘The enemy want to lull us into a false sense of security,’ the station master told them. ‘Assume, every minute of the day, that a bomb is going to drop.’ He pointed up to the sky.
Stella had been living on high alert ever since.
She tried to instil the same watchfulness in her fellow lodgers at the boarding house, but they laughed.
‘It’s a phoney war,’ they cried, and she rolled her eyes.
Didn’t they understand the strategy? Hitler’s wiliness?
He would want to cause as much damage as possible. Bomb the heart out of London.
Which was why it was important to live each day as if it might be your last.
And then, on 7 September, the Blitz began.
Black Saturday. Bomb after bomb dropped on a London that had been braced yet not ready, for how could you ever be ready for such wanton destruction?
Dockyards blazed, buildings burned and lives were snuffed out, just like that, with no rhyme or reason as to who was chosen.
Soldiers and police and firemen and air-raid wardens and nurses and ordinary members of the public dug deep to drag survivors from the wreckage, to tend to the wounded, to put out fires, to restore some kind of order.
Tight-lipped, bewildered, angry and determined not to be bowed, the city picked itself up, night after night.
And Stella carried on, working at the shop, turning up for her shift at the fire station.
Drawing, and her letters from Edwin, were her only escape.
And then the worst happened. A bomb fell on the butcher’s shop, killing both her parents.
Stella felt sick with guilt that she had hardly seen them since the war began.
The war had been a good excuse for not travelling to the East End, but she knew, in her heart of hearts, that she had avoided going home because she was so determined to build her new life, and she couldn’t bear their barbed comments.
They obviously thought she thought she was better than they were, which wasn’t the case at all, she was just …
different. The life she wanted was different.
And now they were gone, before she’d had a chance to prove herself and explain to them that all she’d wanted was a window into a new world, not necessarily a better one.
When Edwin came back on leave and heard the news, he didn’t hesitate to wrap her up in his arms, in the big black coat that smelled of him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’
As Stella nestled into his chest, hot tears pouring down her cheeks, she never wanted him to let go.
Mr C surveyed them both gravely.
‘Listen, both of you,’ said Edwin. ‘I’ve got somewhere safe in Somerset you can escape to. I’d feel much happier knowing you can get away from the city if you need to.’
Mr C shook his head. ‘I am never leaving,’ he said. ‘They will not hound me out. London is my home.’
‘Mine too,’ said Stella.
‘At least come and look at it,’ Edwin pleaded with her. ‘Come for the weekend. I’ll be going to my parents. You can stay there for the night, see what you think.’
Stella looked uncertain. Mr C looked between the two of them.
‘And what would your fiancée say?’ he asked Edwin, protective of Stella to the end.
‘I’m certain she would understand,’ said Edwin, defiant. ‘That I can’t think of you both in danger without offering you somewhere to hide.’