The Scarlet Nightingale Read online

  AUGUST 1940

  ‘One need not write in a diary what one is to remember for ever.’

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, 1930

  True to his word, Harry took Rosamund out for supper the following week; not to The Ritz or The Savoy Grill, where high society met in all its defiant wartime glory – conflict permitting – but to a small restaurant in St James’s where the staff seemed to know him and the two of them were closeted in a small and intimate booth where their conversation could not be overheard. It was here that Harry talked about his childhood in Yorkshire, schooling at Ampleforth and holidays with the family at Whitby.

  ‘Whitby? I’ve never been. Isn’t there a ruined abbey?’

  ‘Yes. With the most amazing view out across the North Sea.’

  ‘Do you like the sea?’ she asked.

  ‘“Like” is a bit of an understatement. I love the sea – its moods, its majesty, its … vastness. I love the fact that we have no control over it.’

  ‘Some people find that scary,’ said Rosamund, taking a sip of wine.

  ‘Yes. But perhaps they feel unnerved by its power. I think it keeps us in our place; reminds us that we are not as omnipotent as we sometimes think we are. It proves that there are forces in life far greater and more significant than we are. What about you?’

  ‘I was born and brought up by the sea. I can’t imagine living anywhere other than on the coast.’

  ‘And yet here you are in London.’

  ‘Circumstances. But I plan to live by the sea again one day.’

  ‘That’s funny. I’ve always felt the same.’

  ‘You’re just saying that to be kind.’

  ‘No, I’m not. It’s perfectly true.’

  ‘So why did you come to London?’ asked Rosamund, taking a mouthful of the modest sliver of fried plaice that constituted the highlight of their five-shilling meal.

  ‘The job. I can’t think where else I would have found a way of earning a living from my childhood hobby. When it comes to employment, philately is a bit specialised and I didn’t fancy selling stamps in Stanley Gibbons. I’m not very good at bargaining with people, and a lot of stamp collectors are hard bargainers.’ He grinned. ‘I’d have had to do something else altogether – perhaps worked in a garage. Now that would have been a thing; I could have tinkered with cars to my heart’s content. Then the job at the palace cropped up.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Yes. All that’s over and I must “do my bit” for the war effort.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  Harry looked directly at her. ‘That doesn’t really come into it. We are at war and I want to serve my country.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, you know. This and that …’

  She took a sip of her wine. ‘I see …’ Then she looked away, feeling that she had pried too much.

  Harry reached across the table for her hand. ‘It won’t be long, you know. Before the bombs start to fall and we tumble headlong into heaven-knows-what. I’m just involved in trying to make sure that we’re on the winning side.’

  Rosamund smiled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you?’ asked Harry. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Rosamund shrugged. ‘Look after Aunt Venetia, I suppose – while she looks after me.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘That’s for you to say.’

  Rosamund was taken aback by the remark. She hesitated. ‘I mean, what can I do? I suppose I could go and work in a munitions factory, but I think that would send Aunt Venetia apoplectic. I could join the ATS, or the Air Transport Auxiliary and deliver Spitfires, but I’d have to learn to fly first and by that time the war would be over …’

  ‘God willing!’ added Harry.

  ‘There’s not much else left … apart from going back to Devonshire as a Land Girl; I’d do that like a shot …’

  ‘Would you? That would be rather a waste.’

  Rosamund nodded at her plate. ‘Well, we need food, and with so many men joining up and leaving the land there are plenty of opportunities for women.’

  ‘Planting potatoes? Cutting hay? A bit of a waste of your talents, I’d say.’

  Rosamund laughed. ‘What talents? I haven’t got any, apart from a vivid imagination, so my aunt tells me.’

  ‘You speak French, don’t you? Fluently?’

  ‘As well as I speak English, but that’s not much use here except to order a meal in a French restaurant … if I could get one.’

  ‘How wedded are you to a life in London?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ She looked puzzled.

  ‘Supposing you were able to do your bit … in France.’

  ‘But it’s occupied. The Germans invaded in May.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Rosamund hesitated. ‘I’m not sure what you’re suggesting …’

  Harry took a sip of wine and replaced the glass on the table. Then he leaned forward, took both her hands in his and said, ‘You could be really useful in occupied France.’

  Rosamund was shocked and hurt. She drew her hands from his and sat back in her chair. ‘Is that what this is all about? Is this why you have invited me out to dinner?’

  Harry shook his head emphatically. ‘No. I’ve asked you out to dinner because I enjoy your company and because … I want to get to know you better.’

  ‘So you can work out if I’d be suitable material to send over to France as … what? A spy?’

  ‘Keep your voice down. And please … I was only suggesting that if you did want to “do your bit”, there are better ways of utilising your talents than … planting potatoes.’

  ‘Utilising my talents. Very romantic …’

  ‘Look, just forget it. I didn’t mean to upset you, and I certainly didn’t ask you out to dinner so that I could …’

  ‘Recruit me?’

  ‘No. Not at all. Please. Let’s not talk about it any more. It was just that … well … I didn’t know if you wanted to spend the rest of the war in London with your aunt or …’

  ‘Doing something useful?’

  Harry shrugged.

  Rosamund considered for a moment, then said, ‘You don’t really like that set you go around with, do you?’

  ‘I don’t dislike them.’

  ‘But you don’t feel their behaviour is … appropriate.’

  ‘Not now. Not really. But some of them are already doing their bit, and most of them will be called up soon to join those that have already enlisted, so I suppose they’re just enjoying their freedom while they can. Who can blame them?’

  ‘I see.’

  Harry leaned forward again. ‘Look, I know we’ve only just met, and that I’m probably being a bit forward, a bit premature, but it’s just that I saw something in you that I don’t very often see in a society girl. I mean, a woman. You’re bright, you’re intelligent – far more intelligent than most of them in “the set”, as you call it.’

  ‘Even Diana? She’s much better at maths.’

  ‘Yes. And her talents are being used already.’

  ‘Diana’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that how you knew her … and she doesn’t know you?’

  ‘She knew my name.’

  ‘Only by reputation and because you’re …’ her words faded away.

  ‘Because I’m what?’

  Rosamund took a deep breath. ‘Because you are a good catch.’

  Harry laughed.

  ‘You are!’

  ‘Well, I’m very grateful for the compliment. Not that it’s strictly true. I’ve very little money to speak of – no country estate …’

  ‘Neither have I … now …’ Then she asked the question again: ‘So how do you know Diana?’

  ‘There’s a place where we can use people with a flair for numbers. It’s a part of the intelligence network. It’s based at Moor Park in Hertfordshire.’ He hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t have told you that. But …’ he shrugged, ‘you seem like a nice
girl …’

  Rosamund smiled and shook her head. ‘What am I to make of you, Mr Napier?’

  ‘That’s entirely up to you. Shall I get the bill?’

  ‘Thank you. And do I get a lift home in your lovely motor car?’

  ‘Only if you’ll think about what I’ve said.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Rosamund. Nothing more.

  My mind was in a whirl after that first evening. It took me an age to get off to sleep. I could not help wondering if Harry really did like me or if taking me out to supper was simply a ploy to get me to be a part of … what? It all seemed so unlikely, so cloak and dagger. And, after all, he hardly knew me. Why did he risk telling me such things?

  What Aunt Venetia would have made of it I could not imagine. I would not tell her, of course; she would have had a fit. I felt sure that as far as she was concerned, she and I would be living together for the duration of the war and I would be steered in the direction of a suitable man with whom I could make my future – she had intimated as much. But we were at war now; all ‘suitable men’ were being called up – either as officers (clearly my aunt’s only consideration) or as private soldiers. Men that my aunt would have thought ‘eligible’ were not exactly thick on the ground unless they were in reserved occupations, which meant they were doctors, farmers or teachers. There were coalminers, dockers and railway workers as well but they were hardly likely to come into my aunt’s sphere. I laughed at the thought of coming back to Eaton Square and saying that I had met a wonderful man down at the docks!

  I realise that I am talking as though I were living in Jane Austen’s England, with my guardian deciding on a suitable match. It was not quite as bad as that, but as I now moved in this circle of upper class men and women, they were the ones I met on a daily basis. It simply did not occur to me to look outside that circle. I was not then – and am not now – remotely snobbish, but one is only likely to fall in love with the people one meets socially, and these were they. Oh, and I did love Harry. In spite of my suspicions that he saw the relationship as a way of getting me to be a part of some wartime operation in which he was involved.

  I will never forget that first supper together. Not only because of being with him, alone, and looking into those wonderful green smiling eyes, and being worried that he did not love me as much as I loved him, but also because later that night the first bomb fell on London. The evacuation of Dunkirk in May and June had made us all defiant and determined, and the ‘Battle of Britain’, as we came to call it, had strengthened our resolve, but when Hitler started to bomb London, we knew then that it really was a fight to the death. For all of us, not just ‘the few’.

  I became more and more uneasy at the thought of doing nothing during the war; of simply living with Aunt Venetia and marking time until the hostilities were over. It seemed morally wrong that I should not do my bit, even if that meant leaving what we would nowadays call ‘my comfort zone’. But what to do? I had not the brains to do what Diana was doing – our aptitudes were so different – and the prospect of flying terrified me, so joining the Air Transport Auxiliary and delivering planes was out of the question. Perhaps I really would have to become a Land Girl. Unless, of course, I followed Harry’s advice.

  Chapter 7

  LONDON

  SEPTEMBER 1940

  ‘O herald skylark, stay thy flight

  One moment for a nightingale

  Floods us with sorrow and delight.

  Tomorrow thou shalt hoist the sail;

  Leave us tonight the nightingale.’

  Christina Rossetti, ‘Bird Raptures’, 1876

  True to her word, Aunt Venetia refused to totter along to the nearest air raid shelter swathed in furs when the bombs began falling that September. Instead she made sure that she and Rosamund and Celine and Mrs Heffer – the amply proportioned cook and sole remaining member of the original household staff, whose ‘Mrs’ was bestowed as a courtesy title by Venetia, for she had never married – were safely ensconced in the cellar at 29, Eaton Square, its walls and ceiling reinforced with stout wooden planks thanks to ‘an obliging little builder from Fulham’.

  Each night they would play draughts and gin rummy and whist as the bombs fell around them, keeping up their own spirits with a little help from the liquid variety. Aunt Venetia’s cellar was never to be found wanting during the war, thanks, Rosamund assumed, to the precautions taken to keep it filled up during the 1920s and 30s. It was odd, though, how extra bottles seemed to keep appearing.

  Instead of hosting dinner parties – altogether too risky during the Blitz – Aunt Venetia would have her friends round to lunch, when Mrs Heffer would use her imagination to cobble together what appeared to be some gastronomic delicacy from the meagre rations available at the local butcher and grocer, along with a generous supply of vegetables from her brother’s allotment in Putney. The produce of ‘Dig For Victory’ was much appreciated in Lady Reeves’ household, and Mrs Heffer was not known for her parsimony. Wartime privations or not, Aunt Venetia saw no reason to revise her dictum: ‘Never trust a thin cook.’ Mrs Heffer was clearly a magician of sorts, for her meals always seemed to be greater than the sum of their parts.

  It was at one of Aunt Venetia’s lunches that Rosamund found herself in a compromising situation. Seated around the table were Lord and Lady Belgate (their son Billy had recently joined the RAF), and Sir Patrick and Lady Felpham. Sir Patrick had been a friend of Venetia’s late husband, Sir Oscar Reeves; his wife was a birdlike woman with glasses, looking as though even the slightest breeze would blow her over. So small was she that two cushions had to be placed on her chair in order that she could reach her knife and fork. Sir Patrick, on the other hand, was a large, florid man (probably on account of eating his wife’s ration as well as his own, suggested Aunt Venetia to Rosamund before their guests arrived).

  Rosamund liked the Belgates. He, an archetypal patrician gentleman, tall and besuited with a neatly trimmed grey moustache; she, slender, elegant and well preserved for her years, always gracious and enquiring after Rosamunds’ well-being.

  But it was another enquiry which almost wrong-footed Rosamund on this occasion. Hardly surprisingly, the conversation revolved around the war – especially the Blitz and how long it was likely to continue. The Belgates’ house had narrowly escaped a direct hit a few nights before – the two of them, like the Eaton Square household, had been holed up in the cellar and showered in plaster. Rosamund tried to imagine the pair of them covered in dust and found the task beyond even her imagination, so beautifully turned out were they at all times.

  Then, from the other side of the table, Sir Patrick, between mouthfuls, began to explain that as well as fighting on the front line, there was also fighting behind the enemy lines, or so he had heard. ‘There’s some place in Hertfordshire,’ he said, ‘where they are working on intelligence. Cracking codes and suchlike. Very important work apparently. They’re recruiting bright young things to help with the job.’ He turned to Rosamund. ‘You must have heard of it. It’s just the place for a sharp girl like you.’

  Rosamund smiled at him. Without hesitation, she replied, ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Oh. Shame. I’d like to have known more.’ Sir Patrick harrumphed and helped himself to more potatoes, while his wife made figure-of-eight movements with her fork around a lonely carrot in the centre of her plate.

  Aunt Venetia looked across at Rosamund and frowned, while the bulky Sir Patrick continued to work at maintaining his commendable girth.

  Lord Belgate, laying down his own knife and fork, having disposed of a more modest portion, chipped in. ‘Where did you get that information from, Felpham?’

  ‘Oh, some fellah at my club. Says its vital work apparently. Very hush-hush.’

  Lord Belgate winked at Rosamund. ‘Oh, just the sort of thing that Rosamund would tell you then, if she knew?’

  Sir Patrick huffed and puffed and finally said, ‘Well, I suppose not. Just thought it was interesting, that’s all.’
/>   ‘Very interesting, I should think,’ said Lord Belgate. ‘And yes, vital, too. We need all the help we can get to win this damned war. There are those who said it would all be over by now. How wrong they were. I suspect we’re in for another couple of years at least.’

  ‘Two years! Heaven forbid!’ exclaimed Aunt Venetia.

  ‘I’m afraid so, my dear. You’d better tell Mrs Heffer to get her brother to order more seeds for next year’s crops. How else are we to eat so well?’ He ended his advice with a knowing wink.

  Aunt Venetia smiled wanly. ‘Yes. Well, I’m afraid that pudding is blancmange, and a rather watery one at that.’

  Sir Patrick put down his own knife and fork and harrumphed once more. ‘Churchill might have told us that it’s going to be “blood, toil, tears and sweat”, but he didn’t tell us that it was going to be blancmange instead of jam roly-poly.’

  His wife sniffed. The rest of the company smiled wistfully.

  People ask if we were frightened during the Blitz. I suppose we were. But what I remember most is laughter. Laughter and determination. Every night, as the bombs fell around us, rather than clutching each other and shaking with fear, we gritted our teeth and carried on talking down in the cellar, telling silly stories and learning childish French songs from Celine like ‘Sur le pont d’Avignon’. But then there is a limit to how long you can sit like a rabbit in the headlights, waiting to be hit, and the Blitz just seemed to go on and on.

  Poor Celine. She worried so much about France, which, in spite of never having lived there, she always thought of as her homeland. At the very mention of ‘pâté de fois gras’ or ‘croque monsieur’, her eyes would become misty and take on a faraway look. Not that during the war we had much contact with either.

  The rest of us shared her sorrow for France, but we were annoyed more than anything; annoyed that we couldn’t get on with our lives. Except that we did. As best we could. We became so used to finding a different landscape each morning when we emerged, and to steeling ourselves in case anyone we knew had been killed, as was all too frequently the case. Filth was everywhere. As fast as Celine and I cleared away the dust, so it settled yet again. You could write your name on polished furniture within an hour of it being cleaned. Mrs Heffer’s brother’s house was destroyed, but he kept on with his allotment in a sort of bloody-minded defiance. Without a good gardener, I don’t know how we would have kept body and soul together.