news. But Anna is always on the phone, lately, trying to get through to London. There is such a delay on calls – if you can get through at all, that is. Poor Miss Hallam on the exchange must be having a very trying time. And the delays have got worse. They say it’s because of the bombing.’
Unable to break Fighter Command, Hitler had turned his hatred on London, swearing it would be bombed until it lay a smoking ruin. Night after night the Luftwaffe came. Poor, poor London.
‘It must be. I booked a call to Montpelier Mews yesterday evening and I got it half an hour ago. It seems that Sparrow is coping with it all. When the sirens go she says she puts her box of important things in the gas oven, then takes her pillow and blankets and sleeps under the kitchen table.’
Mrs Emily Smith: Andrew’s cockney sparrow. Once, in another life when Andrew lived in lodgings in Little Britain, Sparrow was his lady who did. Now she took care of the little mews house that once belonged to Aunt Anne Lavinia.
‘Sparrow! I sometimes forget that Anne Lavinia left you her house, Julia. Is it all right? No bomb damage?’
‘Not so far. I’ve told Sparrow she must lock it up and come to Rowangarth, but she won’t hear of it. Hitler isn’t going to drive her out of London, she says, and insists she’s safer than most. It’s the people in the East End who are taking the brunt of it, though the papers say that Buckingham Palace has been bombed. Everything’s all right at Cheyne Walk, I suppose?’
‘I suppose it is. Do you know, Julia, I’d forget all about that house if it wasn’t for the fact that Anna’s mother and brother live next door. It’s been nothing but a nuisance. I could never understand why Clemmy insisted on buying it. I suppose some good did come out of it, though. Elliot and Anna met there.’
‘Yes.’ Julia had no wish to talk about Elliot nor even think about him and was glad when Anna came into the room. ‘Did you manage to get through?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Anna and Julia touched cheeks in greeting. ‘It seems Mama’s number is unobtainable. What can it mean? Has Cheyne Walk been bombed, do you think? What am I to do?’ Anna was clearly distressed. ‘I asked Mama time and time again. “Come to me,” I said. I warned her that London would be bombed but no – the Bolsheviks drove her from her home in Russia and Hitler wasn’t going to drive her from this one, she said, poor though it was.’
‘Poor? But the Cheyne Walk house is rather a nice one,’ Julia protested.
‘I know, I know!’ Anna paced the floor in her agitation. ‘But you know my mother, Julia. Always the Countess, always in black, mourning for her old way of life. She can be very stubborn. Do you think I should go down there?’
‘No, I do not! All around the docks and a lot of central London seems to be in a mess. I doubt you’d be able to get on a bus, let alone find a taxi. It would be madness to go there at a time like this. Your mother has Igor to look after her and –’
‘Not any longer! Igor is an air-raid warden now. Since the bombing started, he’s hardly ever at home!’
‘Anna, my dear.’ Edward Sutton rose slowly to his feet to lay a comforting arm around his daughter-in-law’s shoulders. ‘No news is good news, don’t they say? The Countess will be in touch with you before so very much longer. Perhaps it’s only a temporary thing. Leave it until morning and it’s my guess you’ll get through with no delay at all. Try not to worry. And Julia is here with an invitation for us.’
‘Aunt Helen’s party, you mean? We’ve already heard about it from Tatiana. Daisy told her.’
‘Well, I’m here with the official invitation for the fifth. And don’t forget, Anna, that it’s our party – Nathan’s and mine. And tell Tatty there’ll be dancing, so she’ll be sure to come.’
‘I’ll tell her.’ Tatiana was so secretive these days. Always slipping out or hovering round the telephone. Anna frowned. A young man, of course, but why didn’t she bring him home? ‘She’s in Harrogate this afternoon, collecting for the Red Cross. She said she would come home on the same bus as Daisy.’
‘So it’s settled. We’ll all come. And here’s tea,’ Edward smiled as Karl, straight-backed and unsmiling, laid a silver tray on the table beside Anna.
‘Where is the little one?’ he demanded in his native tongue.
‘Out, helping the Red Cross. She’ll be all right …’ Anna smiled apologetically as the door closed behind the tall, black-bearded Cossack. ‘I’m sorry. He refuses to speak English. I’ve told him it isn’t polite when we have guests, but he’s so stubborn. And he does understand the language. I’ve heard him talking to Tatiana in English. I think it amuses him that people get the impression he doesn’t know what they’re saying.’
‘He’s a good servant, though,’ Edward defended. ‘So loyal, still, to the Czar and surely it’s a comfort to you, Anna, that he’s so protective of Tatiana. How old is he?’
‘I don’t know. He won’t ever say.’ Anna placed a cup and saucer at her father-in-law’s side. ‘But it’s my guess he’s about fifty-five. He’d been a Cossack for some time when he met up with us. We couldn’t have got out of Russia without his help. He’s been with us ever since.’
‘He and Natasha, both. Didn’t you pick up Natasha along the way, too?’ Julia wanted to know.
‘Sort of. She was the daughter of the woman who did our sewing,’ Anna replied in clipped tones. ‘When the unrest first started, she was delivering dresses to us at the farm at Peterhof – we’d gone there for safety. Mother insisted that Igor take her back to St Petersburg, but when they got there the rabble had taken over their house and her parents gone. What else could Igor do but bring her back to us?’
‘Whatever became of her?’ Julia persisted. ‘She went back to London with you, didn’t she, after – after –’
‘After my son was born dead, you mean? Yes, but she didn’t stay long at Cheyne Walk. She left Mama and went to France; Paris, I think it was. I can’t remember. It was a long time ago. But do have a biscuit, Julia …’
‘Positively not!’ Biscuits were rationed and she and her mother would not eat other people’s food. ‘And those are homemade, too,’ she sighed.
‘Cook has a little sugar stored away.’ Anna blushed guiltily because no one should have sugar stored away. ‘But I think it will soon be used up,’ she hastened.
‘Mm. So has our cook. I think people who remember the last war quietly bought in a few things – just in case. I know Tilda has a secret stock of glacé cherries.’ Julia had been quick to notice the tightening of Anna’s mouth, the dropping of her eyes. Did she still mourn her stillborn baby or was it thoughts of the man who fathered it that brought the tension to her face because no one, not even the compliant Anna, could have been happy with Elliot Sutton.
‘I think Tatiana is meeting Daisy in her lunch hour.’ Deliberately Julia talked of other things. ‘They’ll spend most of it searching for cigarettes, I shouldn’t wonder, though Tatiana told me the other day she was down to her last smear of lipstick, so perhaps they’ll be looking for a lipstick queue.’
‘I’ll give her one of mine,’ Anna smiled, all tension gone. ‘Now won’t you have just one biscuit?’
‘Absolutely not, thanks. And did you see it in the papers this morning? When the new petrol coupons start in October, petrol is going up to two shillings a gallon!’
‘Two shillings and a ha’penny, to be exact,’ Edward smiled, ‘and cheap at twice the price when you think of the lives it costs just getting it here.’
‘Cheap,’ Julia echoed, all at once thankful that exploding mines in the Western Approaches seemed safer by far than bringing crude oil to England. Seamen crewing a tanker deserved all the danger money they were paid when just one hit was enough to send the ship sky-high. There were no second chances on a tanker.