“They refused me at the beginning of the war, but I speak Greek as well as rudimentary Italian and German, and it seems the army has come to see the advantages of that.” The light glinted from Mr. Cuddy’s spectacles as he nodded. “Yes, I have enlisted. And if this war goes on as it has, you boys will be doing the same before long.”
“But you’re too old,” blurted Lewis, without thinking.
Mr. Cuddy smiled. “I tried telling myself that. But for this it doesn’t matter. I won’t be fighting at the front, just trying to keep things running smoothly behind the scenes.”
“But what about us?” Irene was frowning so hard that Lewis guessed she was holding back tears.
“You will all be perfectly fine without me,” Mr. Cuddy had replied. “William will rebuild his father’s business when the war is over. Lewis, I think you can do anything you set your mind to, once you decide what that is. And Irene—our Irene is going to be prime minister, of course.” He lifted Irene’s chin gently with his forefinger, the first time Lewis remembered him touching any of them, then he had bid them a determined goodbye.
They’d watched him from the window, tramping down the drive with his rucksack as if he were going on holiday after all, and Lewis had felt as if he’d awakened from a silly sort of bad dream and found it not to be a dream.
In the autumn, Edwina had enrolled them in the village school, and while they were bored with their schoolwork, life at the Hall had gone on very much as before.
At first, Lewis wouldn’t talk about Mr. Cuddy when William or Irene brought his name up, and when letters came from Italy, he pretended disinterest and refused to read them. But sometimes in the evenings, when everyone had gone to bed, he would creep into Edwina’s drawing room. There he could pore over the letters alone, by the light of a guttering candle, as many times as he wanted.
Mr. Cuddy had been posted to General Clark’s 5th Army, which had landed at Salerno, on the shin of Italy, a few days after Montgomery’s 8th Army entered Italy at its toe on the 3rd of September. As the weeks passed and William and Irene speculated about whether Mr. Cuddy would eventually meet up with John Pebbles, Lewis occasionally let slip that he knew more than he admitted. Irene looked at him but said nothing, and somehow this made their friendship closer.
Raids had been light and infrequent over the past eighteen months, since the Blitz had ended in May of ’41. They were all allowed home for a long holiday at Christmas—William to his family’s home in Greenwich; Irene to Kilburn, where her house had been repaired enough to be at least habitable; and Lewis to his parents’ tiny flat in Millwall.
As they sat down to tea the first evening in the room that served his family as bedroom, parlor, and kitchen, Lewis had glanced at the three places set on the makeshift table and asked, “Where’s Cath, then?” thinking she must be working an evening shift at her factory.
The look he’d come to recognize passed between his parents again, then his father stared down at the pile of mashed turnips on his plate and muttered, “Bloody Yanks.”
Lewis turned to his mother for enlightenment. He’d seen the American soldiers in the street, and the American military police everyone called “snow-drops,” in their white belts and hats, but he didn’t make the immediate connection.
His mother gave another glance at his da before she said softly, “Your sister’s gone, Lewis. I hadn’t the heart to tell you in a letter. She’s married an American flier who’s been invalided home—” Faltering, she touched his father’s arm, but he shook his head, refusing her comfort. “And she’s going to have a baby,” his mother finished quickly.
Lewis had heard enough village gossip to guess the order of events, but that didn’t quell his rising anger. “You mean she’s gone off to the States without even saying goodbye?”
“It was all that quick, in the Registry Office … and your da didn’t want any fuss.” His mum’s eyes filled with tears and she pushed a covered dish towards Lewis. “The greengrocer saved me a special treat for your tea—fresh Brussels sprouts.”
Feeling suddenly nauseated, Lewis pushed back his chair. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m not hungry.”
The air outside was dense with a freezing fog that seemed to creep inside his clothes and cling to his skin, but Lewis found himself trudging along West Ferry Road in the dark, the thin fabric of his coat pulled up round his chin. There was nothing he could do about the cold nipping at his wrists and ankles. His sleeves were too short, as were his trousers: he’d already outgrown the few items allotted by his ration coupons.
It seemed there was nothing he could do about people leaving, either, he thought, kicking savagely at an empty tin in the street. A man hurrying in the opposite direction gave him an angry look as he stopped and picked it up. “Don’t you know there’s a salvage drive on, sonny?” the man said roughly, pushing past him.
Fury washed through Lewis and he turned, fists up, but the man had disappeared into the blackness.
How could his sister leave them, knowing they would probably never see one another again, and not even send him a letter?
He walked on, as far as Island Gardens, but the river was invisible in the heavy overcast and he felt it only as an icy void sucking more of the warmth from his body. At last, he turned and trudged back to the flat, but that evening seemed to set the tone for the rest of his holiday.
His parents had changed. It seemed to Lewis that his sister’s desertion, following so soon on his brothers’ deaths, had made his gentle father bitter, while his mother was simply worn down with repeated grief and loss. And he found he had changed, as well. When he met his old mates they jeered at his accent, and their lives were filled with talk of going down the pub and concerns that seemed foreign to him. Most had left school at fourteen, in favor of factory work until they were old enough to enlist, and although he felt an outcast, to his surprise he didn’t envy them.
The days dragged by. He thought several times of William, just across the river, but Greenwich seemed a world away and William had not invited him to visit. On Boxing Day, with guilty relief, he kissed his parents goodbye and caught the train back to Surrey, but his pleasure at returning there had been short-lived.
As he watched Mr. Haliburton at the chalkboard, he thought of the first time he had seen him in Edwina’s drawing room, on New Year’s Day. William and Irene had returned and they’d all gathered in the kitchen, poking spoons and fingers into Cook’s pots while she scolded and flapped at them with her apron. After a few weeks of subsisting mostly on turnips and potatoes, Lewis’s stomach was growling at the thought of the ham Cook had promised for their New Year’s feast, and there was to be a tart as well, made from the preserved gooseberries they’d picked in the autumn. He’d been inching towards the larder with the idea of just having a peek at the sweet when Edwina had come into the kitchen and asked them to join her.
“Maybe we’ll get a glass of sherry for a New Year’s toast,” William whispered, elbowing him as they followed Edwina down the corridor, but Lewis had been more interested in watching Irene. She wore a wool skirt and jumper rather than trousers, her glossy copper hair bounced on her shoulders, and it seemed to him that there was something different about the way she walked. Irene had looked back then and smiled at him, and it had made him feel quite odd.