Page 104 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

She turned back from the window and looked at him sadly, and he thought she was going to tell him the horrible truth, that she didn’t care for him, had never cared for him. She would try to do it kindly, let him down gently.

‘Oh, James,’ she said. ‘What would have been the point? I couldn’t leave the ranch.

There I was in Wyoming, and there you were in Paris with half a world between us.

As far as I knew, I was never going to be able to leave.

Or, at least, not for years and years. And by then, your life and mine would have moved so far apart.

’ She stopped, looked down at her hands, freed them from between her knees and folded them together.

It looked like a casual movement, but he saw her knuckles whiten.

‘For all I knew,’ she said, ‘you were married.’ She looked up at him. ‘Why aren’t you?’

This was not the moment to mention Tata. ‘Why aren’t you?’ he countered.

She gave a dry bark of a laugh. ‘Have I not given you an idea of what life is like on a ranch in Wyoming? Who on earth could I have married? But you, with all the women in Paris no doubt chasing after you?’

‘But they weren’t you,’ he said.

She looked at him with disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me you never looked at another woman after I left.’

He thought the truth – or some of it – was safer: she was an intelligent woman. ‘I didn’t say that. I did look. I even kissed a few.’ She lifted a hand as if to stop him going further. ‘But they weren’t you. I asked you to marry me, don’t you remember?’

‘Boy-and-girl romance,’ she said dismissively. But her expression was not indifferent.

He said, ‘You told me then that I could court you. May I now?’

She laughed shakily. ‘What a nice, old-fashioned English word.’

He unfurled one of her hands from the other and held it in both of his. ‘May I?’ he asked again.

She looked at him and, no, she was not indifferent, but she was afraid.

‘I had no idea when I came here that I would meet you again. It’s almost as if I was never away, we were never apart.

But the world is very different now. It’s a bad, dangerous place.

Night is coming. It’s dusk already. We have so little time. ’

‘All the more reason to hold on to what’s precious,’ he said. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers, very lightly. ‘May I?’

‘Court me? Here at the end of the world?’

‘Before night comes. Two people who’ve found each other again, against all the odds. May I?’

‘You may,’ she said.

Together they packed up paintings, furniture, silver, porcelains.

They did the Candé runs together. They were entertained lavishly at both ends, by Hélène and by the Bedauxs.

And at Candé, one evening at the end of May, they went for a walk in the green, river-haunted twilight, with the soft flicker of bats above them and the melancholy calling of owls echoing back and forth across the valley; and when they stopped at the edge of the scarp, where the ground dropped away, she turned to him, and he saw that it was all right.

He took her in his arms and kissed her, and she kissed him back, for a long time, as twilight turned to darkness.

Two people at the end of the world.

June was the best month for Scarborough, when the weather was fine but the holiday hordes had not yet arrived.

Polly and Lennie had only a week, but it was good to be away on their own.

They slept late, ate heartily, walked a lot.

The sea was still too cold for bathing, but they took off their shoes and paddled at the edge of the water, and enjoyed the brilliant light and the exhilarating freshness of the air.

Sea and cliff and beach, waves endlessly trundling in and turning over with a sigh and a suck, gulls riding the moving air and crying plaintively: it all seemed so eternal.

It must always have been like this. And surely it would always be.

One day, just for variety, they got the car out and drove up the coast to Robin Hood’s Bay, down the steep, cobbled street to the harbour, and had a luncheon of fish and fried potatoes in the Bay Hotel, sitting out on the terrace over the sea.

‘It’s a good thing Al Feinstein didn’t find out about this place,’ Lennie said.

‘He’d have found some way of setting a scene for Robin and Marian here.

Probably would have squeezed Bonnie Prince Charlie and Grace Darling in, too. ’

Polly laughed. ‘When is that film going to come out? I really want to see it. My actual house is in it!’

‘Morland Place looked magnificent,’ Lennie assured her. ‘I should think it will come out in the autumn in the States, and probably January or February over here. If—’ He didn’t finish that sentence. ‘What I want to know,’ he said briskly, to cover himself, ‘is how Rose is getting on as Anastasia.’

‘You’re worried about her?’

‘Not at all. Van Kerk will look after her. I’m just interested. I always will be, you know.’

‘That’s all right. I’m not jealous. I’ll always be interested in James.’

On the way back, their route took them along an ordinary street of Scarborough houses, where a crowd of people had gathered on the pavement around a lorry parked at the kerb.

Lennie slowed, and Polly said, ‘Oh, do let’s find out what’s going on.

’ So he stopped and they got out. On the back of the lorry there was a load of corrugated steel, in what looked like curved sections.

The lorry driver and several men, presumably residents, were staring at a piece of paper the driver was holding.

As he got nearer, Lennie could see it was a technical diagram of some sort.

‘Can I help?’ he asked.

The crowd – women in aprons, some wearing head-rags, men in shirtsleeves, and children of both sexes in a state of excitement – parted willingly, and the driver looked relieved.

He pushed his cap back in order to scratch at his head, and said, ‘It’s this ’ere plan, maister. Ah’m trying to explain to this gent—’

‘He’s got it upside down,’ the gent – presumably the householder outside whose house they were planted – said indignantly.

‘It doesn’t matter which way oop Ah hold it, you daft—’ the driver began, in exasperation.

Lennie played peacemaker. ‘May I see?’

Polly could see they were both glad to defer to him. Solomon and the baby , she thought with amusement. ‘What’s all this about?’ she asked the woman beside her, whose carpet slippers suggested she came from the house too.

‘Anderson shelter,’ the woman said. ‘In case of air raids. T’council’s givin’ ’em out. Poor folk get ’em for nowt, but we have to pay seven pund,’ she added proudly.

‘Oh,’ said Polly. ‘How does it work?’

‘You’ve to dig a hole, like, then them round bits go over it, then you put the muck you dig out over the top.

It’s simple enough,’ she added confidentially, ‘but you know men! Got to make a song an’ dance out of everything.

Look at ’em!’ she said fondly, nodding to where Lennie, the driver, and three or four responsible householders all had their heads jammed into the small space above the diagram.

‘Lord save us if Ah’d to look at a recipe every time Ah cooked dinner! ’

Polly smiled dutifully. ‘So, is everyone getting one?’

‘Aye, miss, everyone in t’town ’at’s got a garden. Our warden, Tom Battersby, said ’at folk as haven’t’ll have to shelter in t’cupboard under t’stairs, or under t’kitchen table. God help ’em,’ she added charitably.

‘I suppose it’s necessary,’ Polly said doubtfully.

The woman looked stern. ‘Folk forget, but Scarborough was bombed in the war. Hundreds killed. You got to be prepared, miss. Ey oop, your man’s got ’em sorted out, seemingly. Now mebbe we’ll get some action.’

The confabulation broke up. Polly saw from Lennie’s posture that he was ready to go into the back garden and see the job through, but she caught his eye and gave him a stern look, and he said something to the men, caps were touched and hands shaken, and she got him back.

‘Damned interesting,’ he said, when they were in the car. ‘Those curved sheets are bolted together, with steel plates at either end. The corrugation makes them very strong.’

‘That lady said they put them up over a hole in the ground.’

‘Yes, they’re half buried, which makes them even safer.’

‘But you’d be sitting on the cold, damp earth. And if it rained, I bet it would flood – what’s to stop it?’

He glanced at her. ‘It won’t be an ideal situation,’ he said. ‘But better than being blown up. Scarborough’s situation on the east coast makes it a likely target. In the last war—’

‘I know. That woman told me. It was bombed.’

‘Shelled, actually, from the sea, but bombs are more likely this time. Better to take precautions.’

‘She called it an Anderson shelter,’ Polly said on an enquiring note.

‘After Sir John Anderson, who’s been put in charge of Home Security. He commissioned an engineer to design it, and the steel is manufactured at a steel works in North Wales.’

‘You’ve read all about it.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not just Scarborough, is it?’

‘Anywhere they think might be a target. London, of course, and the south-east. The east coast. Anywhere near military installations, or docks. Or railway centres.’

‘York?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t tell me?’

He smiled faintly. ‘I had better things to talk to you about. I knew you’d find out sooner or later.’

‘But what do we do about Morland Place? All the servants …’ She frowned. ‘I seem to remember that people went down into their cellars in the war.’

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea. We’re surrounded by a moat. I don’t know how thick the walls are between the water and the cellar, but if there was even a crack, and the water poured in …’

‘So – what, then? Do I have to have a lot of these Anderson shelters built out in the fields? Or one big one?’

‘I wouldn’t worry. I don’t think Morland Place is likely to be bombed directly. And I think it’s strong enough to stand up to anything randomly falling nearby. Just tell people to keep away from the windows, in case of broken glass.’

‘You’ve thought about this,’ she said.

‘It’s my job to take care of you all.’

‘It’s my job too. But I just never believed …’ She stared out of the window. They had come down onto the Esplanade now, and she could see the sea, vast and quietly moving in its massive indifference to the transitory concerns of man. ‘It’s really going to happen, isn’t it?’

‘I think so,’ he said unwillingly. ‘It’s like a runaway train – I can’t see how we can stop it.’

‘And what about you?’

He didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. ‘I’ll serve in any way I can. But I’m not a British citizen, so I won’t be called up to fight.’

She nodded, and was quiet all the way back to their hotel room. Then she put herself into his arms, and said, ‘It’s our last night here. Let’s not allow this to spoil it. Let’s be as merry as possible.’

They dined in the hotel. They had a lot of champagne, and after dinner they danced together until the orchestra stopped playing and packed up their instruments.

When they got home, they learned that the first call-up under the Military Training Act had taken place on the 3rd of June. John, Martin, the footman Sam, and two of the grooms had all left for training camp.