Hope tutted. ‘It must be that new lad who’s taken over from Will Capper; didn’t I say he looked decidedly wet behind the ears? Your letter has probably ended up in a hedge somewhere.’
‘Never mind the post boy,’ said Arthur, seated in the wicker chair to Kit’s left, and as a result, the one closest to the grotesquely scarred flesh of his face. ‘Tell us exactly what happened to you. How the hell did you survive the sinking of the Arcadia and then not surface until now?’
It was a question Kit had often asked himself: just how the hell had he survived? With painfully deformed hands – his fingers had practically melted and fused together when the flames had engulfed him – he took the glass of barley water Romily passed to him from the tray on the table. ‘My memories are still patchy,’ he said, ‘and it’s anybody’s guess whether I’ll ever remember everything. My last memory is of being blown off my feet and feeling I was being burnt alive. The next thing I knew, I was waking in a hospital bed covered in bandages. Apparently I’d been as near to death as one can be without actually being dead.’ He took a sip of the refreshing drink, placing the glass against what remained of his lips, keeping to himself how he’d screamed with pain every time the doctors and nurses had moved him. Or how he’d cried like a baby when his dressings were changed, despite the gentleness of the nurses who took care of him.
‘I’m told an American merchant ship on its way back to New York picked me out of the water,’ he continued, ‘and took me to a hospital when they reached port. They did their best to dress my burns, and to treat the infection and raging temperature I then had, as well as try to figure out who I was, but I had total amnesia. They said it was the shock; my brain had shut down. It’s working better now. For instance, I know I went to Canada to learn to fly, but I have only fleeting memories of doing so. And I have no memory of the Arcadia sinking, or of being in the water. That part’s a blank.’
‘Perhaps that’s just as well,’ said Evelyn quietly.
Kit turned his head and from beneath the brim of his ridiculous hat – which he wore not so much to hide behind as to protect his damaged skin from the sun – forced himself to look at her, to see how pitifully the girl he had hoped might one day come to love him now regarded him. He knew that wish would never come true now. Nobody in their right mind would love or marry him. He found Evelyn’s gaze fixed on his, cool, assured and unflinching. Its directness was unnerving; he’d grown more used to people not being able to look him in the eye. Had come to expect it.
Throughout his long journey back to England, he had encountered any amount of stares, and on his way here from the train station, a couple of young boys with fishing rods slung over their shoulders had gawped at him in fascinated horror, then sniggered when they’d passed by. At least they hadn’t run off screaming that they’d seen a monster, which was how he’d thought he looked when he first saw his face without bandages. His righthand profile was not much altered, but the left side of his face was hideously distorted. The doctors had carried out skin grafts to try and salvage what remained of his ear, cheek and jaw, and all the time Kit, still suffering from amnesia, had viewed the disfigured face in the mirror as that of a stranger. His body had suffered too, particularly his legs, which was why he now walked with a limp. Once he’d been able to get out of bed in the hospital, the nurses had helped him to regain the use of his legs. Initially the pain had been so great he had been overcome with nausea and exhaustion. It would all take time, the nurses had encouraged him, he would have to be patient.
‘I think you’re right,’ he said finally in answer to Evelyn’s remark. Then in an effort to lighten the intensity of the mood, he said to the group as a whole, ‘Well then, tell me about this memorial service you held in my honour. I do hope nice things were said of me. Do you suppose people will feel cheated that they gave up their valuable time for a fraud?’
‘My dear boy,’ said Roddy, ‘that will be the very last thing they’ll feel.’
‘We’ll get your old room ready,’ said Romily. ‘You must stay with us for as long as you want.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Hope. ‘No rushing back to London. I won’t hear of it.’
Kit thought of London and his old life there. While he could not remember the sinking of the Arcadia, he could recall in detail how bored he’d been working at the Imperial Bank and how excited he’d been to embark on the journey to Canada to learn to fly. If only he’d listened to his sister and been patient enough to bide his time as a reservist and wait for the RAF to call him up. But no, his foolishly eager need to jump the gun, to be seen to be doing something, coupled with the need to impress Evelyn, had been for naught.
As often happened when he was exhausted and began to rue the day he’d left England for Canada, he felt the dark cloud of depression descend, bringing with it the familiar feeling that he was as good as useless now; that it would have been better had he died in the Atlantic with the rest of the men on board the Arcadia.
Part Three
The New Chapter
‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’
Winston Churchill, 20th August, 1940
Chapter Seventy-Three
December 1940
It was Boxing Day afternoon and Romily was home on a three-day pass. She hadn’t expected to be able to get away, but fortunately the rota had enabled both her and Sarah to have a short break; it was the first Romily had had since joining the ATA. Her friend had warned her that the hours were long and tiring, and so they were, but despite existing in a state of perpetual exhaustion, not for a very long time had Romily felt so energised or alive.
She had joined the Air Transport Auxiliary exactly a year to the day since Jack’s death, and she liked to think he would approve and be cheering her on. Her initial training period had coincided with the Luftwaffe targeting airfields in southern England, followed by an all-out attack on London when bombs rained down on the city. It had started with more than three hundred German bombers, escorted by over six hundred fighter planes, coming up the Thames and bombing Woolwich Arsenal and the docks, a gasworks and a power station, leaving hundreds dead and many injured. Since then the East End of London had suffered nightly bombing raids, while thousands of people crowded into Underground stations to sleep in safety.
Last month Germany had undertaken a new tactic, that of bombing provincial cities in order to wipe out British industry and a number of ports. The devastation and death toll served to confirm that Romily had done the right thing in leaving Hope in charge of running Island House, with Florence taking care of the children. It had not been an easy decision leaving Isabella; after all, she was the child’s guardian while Elijah continued to serve in the Suffolk Regiment, but her conscience simply would not have allowed her to remain living a life of comfort and ease while so many were suffering, not when she had a genuine skill to offer.
Weekly letters from Hope and Florence had kept her abreast of life in the village, how the LDV had become the Home Guard, and how Stanley’s mother had written to say that she knew exactly where her son was and that they were welcome to him – good riddance to bad rubbish was the general gist of her scribbled note, according to Hope. The spite of her message was kept from Stanley; instead he was told that his stay at Island House was now official and came with his mother’s blessing. Not that Stanley gave a hoot. As far as he was concerned, Melstead St Mary was his home; he was happy there, especially as he now had a new friend, an evacuee from the East End who’d arrived with a new influx of children. The village school was full to bursting and Hope was helping out with art classes, as well as listening to children read.
Now, as Romily circulated amongst the guests at the party Hope had organised for the village, she came across Roddy alone by the fireside. ‘You look thoughtful,’ she said, squeezing past Miss Gant and Miss Treadmill to join him.
‘I was thinking of the transformation you’ve wrought here,’ he said.
‘Me? Oh no, Hope is responsible for putting this party together. I didn’t do a thing.’
‘That’s my point,’ said Roddy. ‘Poor Hope was so deeply mired in her grief for Dieter and her bitterness towards her father, she would never have been able to do something like this, not until you came into her life.’
‘I refute that entirely. It’s down to the passing of time, nothing to do with me.’
Roddy shook his head. ‘No, my dear, you must take your share of the credit. Take a look around you; the evidence is plain to see. There’s Arthur with his wife, and now the proud father of a fine baby boy. And there’s Kit in front of the Christmas tree with Evelyn and her brother. Admittedly Kit’s not yet fully back from the brink, but that girl is working her firm but loving magic on him, just as I suspected she would. Hope too is allowing herself to fall in love again, with Edmund. Just look at the expression on her face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her looking more confident and assured of herself. This is all down to you, Romily; you brought this family back together – back to life – just as Jack wanted.’
‘They did it themselves, Roddy. I merely welcomed them to treat Island House as their true and proper home, so perhaps it’s the house that should be thanked. I know that for myself it was a great comfort being here after Jack died. I wish he was here to see this,’ she said, her voice suddenly sad and her gaze falling on Elijah with Isabella in his arms. He could not have looked a more proud father as he showed the little girl off to Billy and his parents. ‘Allegra should be here with us too,’ she said quietly.
