The Wardrobe Mistress Read online

  The remnants of youth sloughed from her when she donned the slate-blue uniform of an Aircraftwoman third Class, learned how to march and salute, and was baptised into the world of wireless operation. She forgot about theatre, London and her absent dad – until Germans bombers raided Biggin Hill. The shock of being in direct fire loosened the hard-packed anger within her. Her dad had fought in the last war, the one that had ended two years before she was born. He even had a war wound, nerve damage to his right hand that forced him to write with his left.

  She decided she must make contact with him, otherwise it might be too late. The trouble was, she didn’t have his address and her mother claimed not to know it. ‘Near the theatres,’ Ruth Quinnell said when Vanessa pressed her. ‘That’s all I know. All I want to know.’

  But Vanessa didn’t believe Ruth. Her mother had told her aged five that having her tonsils taken out ‘wouldn’t hurt a bit.’ It had been horrendous. Ruth had also warned Vanessa that in London, ‘Men prey on single girls.’ That hadn’t happened either. The Fressenden Art School had taken good care of its female students. Separate accommodation, chaperoned life-drawing classes. Their rules had been so restrictive, Vanessa had been knocked sideways by Biggin Hill, which teemed with highly sexed, available men. Or ‘demi-Gods in blue’ as some of her fellow WAAFs regarded the fighter pilots.

  One afternoon when she was visiting home, Vanessa searched Ruth’s bureau and found an address book. Under ‘Q’ was a single entry: Clive J. Quinnell. As if he were a solicitor or the insurance man. There was an address for Long Acre, WC2.

  She wrote and after a delay, her father replied with three lines.

  Splendid to hear from you, Toots. I think about you often. Have you finished school yet?

  Still at school? Had the years become a blur to him? They began a cautious correspondence, no mention of Stanshurst. In November 1940, Vanessa wrote that she was married. A whirlwind romance, typical of the age, love and commitment conducted in six-eight time. Leo Kingcourt was a Spitfire pilot with corn-coloured hair. One kiss, and Vanessa had become a liquid version of herself. He’d proposed to her on October 15th, 1940, and they’d married two weeks later.

  Her dad’s reply addressed her as ‘Mrs L Kingcourt’ and he’d enclosed five pounds for a wedding gift. In his jerky left-hand script he wrote, ‘Tell my son-in-law I’ll look up and wave next time there’s a dog-fight over London. Bring him up, I’m keen to meet you both.’

  There never was time. Within hours of marrying Leo, she knew she’d blundered. There followed twenty-four days of wretched shame, and then Leo was killed..

  At her own request, she was posted to an airbase in the Midlands. A few months after that, she was sent to Waddington, Lincolnshire, and after that to Yorkshire. Moving every ten months or so, she drifted ever further north. She greeted New Year 1945 at RAF Banff on Scotland’s Moray Firth, north of Aberdeen. The airfield was white as a wedding cake.

  It was from Banff, after four years of correspondence, that she set off to London with the intention of finally meeting Clive ‘Johnny’ Quinnell once more. He had written, urging her to come and see him, and not in his usual bantering tone.

  ‘Toots, I’ve something to tell you which can’t wait. I’d best not write it. Can you get leave?’

  February 9th, 1945 came wrapped in whirling snow. Winter-scoured hills were the unbroken view through the train window as Vanessa made the long haul south. A gruelling overnighter, she was woken at every stop by trackmen breaking the ice on the train wheels. She’d been granted forty-eight hours’ leave and travelling would eat up most of it.

  As the locomotive steamed through the fading, Friday afternoon, Vanessa got her first view of the capital in nearly five years. It was a city raped.

  A giant flatiron had been randomly slammed down and familiar shapes were razed from the skyline. Windowless factories made her think of ruined monasteries. Where once there’d been residential streets, gable ends stood forlorn. Doorways remained absurdly upright, the homes they’d served vanished. Facades had been ripped away, leaving interiors naked to public gaze. Rubble lay everywhere. Gangs of men rammed pick-axes at the frozen ground, their faces lit by fires in dustbin incinerators.

  By the time Vanessa stepped on to the platform at Euston station, it was dark and she was stiff with cold in spite of her thick, WAAF greatcoat. Thanks to innumerable hold-ups, she had only three hours in which to find the White Hart on Drury Lane. Three hours in which to recognise her dad and attempt to sew up nineteen years of separation. The prospect terrified her.

  The White Hart had been Clive’s choice and he’d telegrammed directions, though actually, she knew where the pub was. Presumably, it was his local, Long Acre being only a short hop from Drury Lane. She wasn’t keen on entering pubs alone, but he’d be waiting for her. And it would be warm! She was looking forward to a glass of port or ginger wine . . . anything to stop her teeth chattering. London cold was different from the dry, Scottish cold. City air tasted acrid, like a frozen cough from infected lungs.

  As she walked as fast as she dared along the unlit streets, she pictured her dad waiting. Tall, with slick, black hair and twinkling eyes. A joke on his lips.

  Clive had joked, but did Johnny? Clive was like the new moon, a sliver of a memory. Johnny was the dark of the moon.

  London still retained the blackout, its street lights doused, windows, blanked-out with card or thick drapes. White squares painted on the kerb guided her feet, but she still got lost. It was like going blindfold. Only on her third tramp down Drury Lane did she look up and see the White Hart’s unlit sign. Tugging the door with numb fingers, she was almost hurled off her feet by a man rushing out. His black cloak hung open to reveal old-fashioned evening dress including a starched waistcoat and white tie. He was ramming on a felt hat, as if he had hardly a moment to lose. As they moved in unison, unintentionally obstructing each other, the pub’s door let light on to the pavement.

  To Vanessa, the careless act felt like an insult to her dead husband and those of his comrades who had given their lives defending the approaches to London. She hissed, ‘It’s illegal to show light! If the bastards ever come back, this place might cop it.’

  With contrary gallantry, the stranger pushed the door wider so she could pass through. Doing so revealed that his cloak was lined with red silk. ‘Are we referring to the Luftwaffe?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘You’re out of touch, gentle nymph. They don’t fly over any more, they launch rockets at us.’

  ‘Out of touch? I speak to men risking their lives in the air every day!’

  ‘Ah; I suppose that beneath your coat is a uniform?’ His voice held a deep vibrato. ‘Are you going in, my dear, or patrolling the street for our protection?’ His was an aging face with sagging jowls and an off-set dimple. Vanessa couldn’t see his eyes, but she imagined them creasing with amusement. For some reason, she wanted to laugh too, but resisted and said with controlled exasperation, ‘If there’s such thing as fate, you’re tempting it!’

  ‘Fate? Of course it exists and I’d enjoy discussing the premise with you, but time has the better of me. I must run. Curtain’s up in twenty minutes.’

  The tang of cigar smoke and bay tree oil lingered after he’d gone.

  Curtain’s up. She’d been conversing with an actor. Calling her ‘Gentle nymph’ was flattering but hardly accurate. At just over five foot, Vanessa was short enough to qualify but her hair did not hang in tresses. It was neatly turned up under her cap. Nor was there any drapery about her person. Even her handkerchief was folded away in the webbing bag slung across her double-buttoned chest. Her coat had locomotive smuts and smelled of second-class carriages; stale cigarette smoke, mainly.

  Inside the pub, she chose a door marked ‘saloon bar’. From the doorway, she looked for her father. For Clive. A spotty boy in overalls leered at her, as did old men in caps, their rough cheeks attesting to a daily skirmish with blunt razors and second-rate soap. A tired-looking ARP warden glanced her way, t
hen went back to nursing his pint.

  There was a greying man with an old, chequered coat slung across his knees, bashing out a tune on the piano and a barmaid levering the top off a bottle of stout. No dark-haired giant stood at the bar with a joke on his lips.

  The pianist broke off as Vanessa swayed in the doorway. She didn’t hit the ground, she tumbled into reality.

  Her father had been an inch away from her, wearing a red-lined cloak and a deep-brimmed hat. She’d been looking for Clive, but Johnny had flitted past.

  She would find herself back in London sixteen days later, crying tears she thought were locked hard away. And her return brought her into the orbit of a man more unfathomable than Clive – or was it Johnny? – Quinnell.

  Chapter 2

  Sunday, February 25th, 1945

  ‘The Coffin Train, Miss?’ The railway guard shook his head. ‘Too late. Five years too late.’

  It shouldn’t have come as a shock to learn that the station serving London’s biggest out-of-town cemetery had been flattened by a bomb early on in the war. This time, she was at Waterloo station, wrung out from this second trek from Scotland in a little over two weeks. It seemed as if London were hell-bent on obstructing her. She said as much, her voice grating because winter always summoned back her childhood hoarseness.

  ‘Shout at Adolf Hitler, Miss, not at me,’ the guard grumbled.

  ‘I’m too exhausted to shout.’ Inside her sturdy, flat shoes, her chilblains throbbed. Her stomach cramped for lack of breakfast. She’d hoped to find a tea stall, but the station concourse was deserted. It wasn’t just early morning, it was Sunday. ‘How would you travel to Brookwood Cemetery? I’m due at a funeral at nine.’

  ‘Not a chance. It’s already twenty past seven.’ The guard seemed to draw satisfaction from the fact.

  ‘I can’t be late. It’s my . . . Look, please, I have to get there.’

  ‘Take the Woking service.’ Moved by her distress, the guard led her to the correct platform. ‘You won’t need a ticket, I’m guessing?’

  She was wearing uniform: a mark of respect.

  ‘I do.’ The telegram had arrived late on Friday, leaving her no time to apply for a military travel warrant.

  ‘This way, then.’ The guard shepherded her to the ticket office, saying, ‘I understand there’s a branch-line from Woking that connects you to the cemetery proper. Good luck, Miss.’

  At eight-fifteen, Vanessa boarded a two-carriage train and sank down on a bench seat. She rubbed her knees through her lisle stockings, achingly cold because in rushing for her train, she’d left her greatcoat behind. Her fingers were chapped because she’d also left her gloves on the last train. At least the Woking-bound locomotive pulled away on time. She’d make the funeral if everything went right from now on.

  At Woking, she learned that trains no longer ran on the branch line. ‘Haven’t for years,’ according to a porter. The cemetery, he informed her, lay five miles outside town. Vanessa cupped her hands to her temples. ‘Bus?’

  ‘Not for another hour. You’ve just missed one.’

  ‘Taxi?’

  The porter scratched under his cap. ‘I saw one draw up to collect a military gent. As you’re in uniform too, he might

  just—’

  Vanessa was off. On the station forecourt, she looked vainly for a black car with a ‘for hire’ sign. A woman was parking a bicycle by the railings, and a farmer’s cart was dropping off passengers. With stringent petrol rationing in force, people had returned to old methods of transport. The horse was stamping, its breath cloudy. She moved towards it and saw a motorbike and sidecar parked a little distance away. An orange pennant fluttered from the sidecar’s roof. ‘Taxi’.

  The motorcyclist was buckling on his helmet but seeing her running towards him, he removed it. ‘Sorry, love—’ then, noting the silver wings and her propeller sleeve badge, he amended ‘love’ to ‘Miss.’ ‘I’ve already got a passenger.’

  ‘I can see that.’ The sidecar was a double one, with space at the back for luggage, or a child. She was good at cramming into small spaces. Once, after a night at a dance, she’d travelled from Keith to Banff in the footwell of a troop truck. Squeezing under the dashboard had seemed preferable to sitting on the knee of a sozzled aircraftman. ‘I’m hoping your passenger’s inclined to share.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so, Miss. Doesn’t seem the sort.’

  Vanessa looked in at the egg-shaped window. The occupant sat with his profile averted, neck muscles tensed as if he was checking a map or reading notes. Dark brown hair was cut bluntly around his ears. She tapped on the glass. ‘Hello?’

  Sidecars were not sound-proof containers. He must have heard.

  She tried again. ‘Excuse me!’

  He was ignoring her and she wasn’t surprised. The sleeve of his coat had three rings of gold braid, the innermost ring forming a loop. The coat was deep blue, and the peaked hat on his knee had the insignia of an anchor and gold leaves. This naval officer was a long way from the sea, probably on official business and with no time to humour a mere Leading Aircraftwoman. What she was about to do would cross a line.

  But the line must be crossed. Vanessa opened the sidecar door. ‘I’m terribly sorry, sir, I really wouldn’t normally . . .’

  ‘What?’ More reprimand than question.

  His eyes matched the day. So cold they stung her.

  ‘I need a – I mean, I’d appreciate –’ she lost her way under the austere gaze. He was quite young. She cleared her throat. ‘I – uh – I have to get to Brookwood by nine. The burial ground? Only the branch line has closed. It’s a funeral . . .’ it would hardly be a party. ‘It would save my life – ’ What was wrong with her? ‘I mean, it would help – ’

  ‘You need a lift.’ The man removed his cap and papers from his lap and got out. Not easy for him and when he straightened up, she could see why.

  He was over six foot, and powerfully built under his figure-skimming frock coat. Not far into his thirties, she reckoned. War promoted the young. Pushed men up the greasy pole. The greasy mast, in his case. His sparrowhawk gaze made her feel as if she was being dissected. Whenever she was anxious, she over-talked. ‘I’m so terribly sorry to be a pest.’

  ‘So you said.’ He stood aside. ‘You’ll have to sit at the back.’

  ‘Of course. It’s very kind of you.’

  ‘Not really. We’re going to the same place.’

  ‘Brookwood? You can’t be going to my funeral – I mean, the one I’m—’

  He levelled a brown-leather hand, cutting her off. ‘Shall we get on with it? You’re late already and I don’t want to be.’

  Like a chastened gundog, she lunged into the bullet-shaped vehicle, anxious not to expose too much thick, grey stocking. Scraping her cap on the ceiling, she plumped down on a shelf-seat, knees up against her chin.

  A moment later, the officer took his place and she felt the chassis sink a little. She said without thinking, ‘I hope the bike can haul our joint weight.’

  ‘If it can’t, you’re getting out.’

  He rationed his friendliness, for sure. But of course, this was a solemn journey for them both. Vanessa hugged her knees and felt the crackle of the latest telegram in her pocket. The one that had reached her as she sat down to supper in the cookhouse. A blow from an invisible cosh.

  At the cemetery gates, the Navy officer eased himself out and held the door for Vanessa. As she stepped out, cramp zipped up the back of her calves and she pitched forward. He shot out a hand to catch her.

  Inhaling two-stroke exhaust, she spluttered on his coat sleeve. ‘Sorry.’ To hide her chagrin, she searched for her purse inside her shoulder bag. ‘You’ll let me pay, Sir?’

  ‘Certainly not. You’d better run. Do you know where you’re going?’ His voice was deep, but flat as though giving an order, and she realised that he wasn’t seeing her at all. And it wasn’t a map or a newspaper scrolled in his hand, but some kind of document. At some poin
t during their journey he’d exchanged brown gloves for a pair of formal white.

  She said, ‘I’m going to see my father buried.’ Without waiting for a reply, Vanessa ran through the cemetery gates, holding her skirt above her knees so it didn’t hamper her. Guessing she’d missed the chapel service, she took a straight line into the landscaped grounds. Brookwood was a necropolis, a city of the dead, built in the Victorian age for London’s surging numbers. It covered acres, and Vanessa understood why it had once had its own dedicated railway, the mournful sounding ‘Coffin Train’. Intersecting paths cut through glades of conifer and birch, silvery in the frozen air. She stopped running when her throat hurt.

  She dug out the telegram her mother had sent. ‘Regret C J Quinnell dead. Funeral nine a.m., Sun 25 Feb.’ It gave basic directions, and ‘Interment at London parishes’ ground, near columbarium.’

  Columbarium? Didn’t that mean a dovecot? Being the Sabbath, few funerals were taking place and she saw nobody she could ask for directions. When she met her own footprints in the frosty gravel, she knew she’d completed a hopeless circle.

  ‘Press on, Kingcourt,’ she muttered. Trying a different direction, she eventually stumbled on a domed and columned folly. A reasonable bet for the columbarium. A funeral was taking place close by.

  Vanessa checked her telegram again. London parishes’ ground? She wasn’t convinced. The monuments in this section had a grandiosity to them. Some were miniature stone mansions – not for the likes of C J Quinnell, unless he’d enjoyed a success his letters had never let on. A horse-drawn hearse drew up, bearing a coffin whose brass fittings glinted. Men in black top hats lifted it to their shoulders. Joining the crowd of mourners, Vanessa saw that a tribute had been placed on top. Not flowers. Hot-house blooms were impossible to get, of course. No, the coffin was adorned with a heavy-bound book and a folded white opera scarf. A writer? A singer?