Into the Darkest Day

“Sure,” she said, and he held out his phone so Abby could type her contact details into it. “My father might come around,” she said as Simon prepared to leave. She didn’t actually think he would, but she felt she had to say it, and she realized she was reluctant to have such a final farewell. What if she never saw Simon again? She probably wouldn’t. “He might remember something.”

“I hope so. I wish I’d asked my grandmother for more details, but it made her so sad to talk about it. One of life’s big regrets maybe, eh?” The smile he gave her was touched with sorrow, and Abby found she couldn’t reply. Yes, life certainly had regrets, big ones. “Thank you for the lemonade, and your hospitality,” he finished more formally. “And perhaps I’ll see you again?”

“Yes, perhaps.” Abby didn’t say anything more as she stood up, and Simon walked to his car. He waved from the driver’s seat, and the dust kicked up, just as it had before, as the car headed back down the long dirt drive, from where it had come.

Chapter Two

London

January 1944

The American troops first started arriving in Britain in January 1942, but the Mather family did not meet any directly until two years later.

The Mathers had, by then, had what some might have called “a good war”. They had no sons who lay beyond rescue on the ash-strewn, bombarded shores of Dunkirk, or to fear might fall from the sky in a smoke-plumed arrow of fire. Their house had not been bombed in those dark, endless nights of the Blitz, although its foundation had been said to be weakened by a nearby blast, and a large crack now bisected the kitchen ceiling. None of their relatives had been killed; a nephew was serving in the Pacific, but, by all accounts, was still alive, and a cousin had been invalided out in 1943. The closest casualty was their neighbor’s boy, who had died at sea during the Norwegian Campaign in 1941, and a friend of the family who had died in an air raid, hit by flying rubble as she’d run for the shelter in the back garden.

Their two daughters, Sophie and Lily, eighteen and sixteen when war was declared in 1939, occupied themselves industriously throughout—Sophie had become a secretary for the War Office, and Lily a Wren in the Casualties Section of the Naval Office. Sophie had volunteered as soon as she could, eager to get involved in the excitement, and Lily had been conscripted in 1941, when she was eighteen.

Their mother, Carol Mather, was prominent in the local Women’s Voluntary Service, and she had been both delighted and determined to plow over tulips and azaleas to make room for a Victory garden behind their small semi-detached house in Clapham, to sew and knit and bake as much as she could, and to champion every cause, from hats and mittens for evacuees to serving tea to bombed-out citizens from mobile canteens, graciously officious with a large metal urn and a great number of rather stale buns. Carol reveled in the can-do opportunities the war presented women, although she was never so imprudent as to articulate it quite like that.

In January 1944, with the Americans firmly ensconced in their country and preparing for an invasion of Europe, for the Mathers, the end of the war seemed, if not precisely in sight, then at least flickering dimly on the horizon, a hope one could almost hold onto.

After nearly five years of relentless war and threat of invasion, of deprivation and death, of the long, lonely wail of the air-raid siren cutting through a clear night and one out of every four spent in clammy cellars or dingy shelters, of ration books and bacon and butter once considered enough for a day now meant to last a week, of dodging craters in pavements and walking past buildings that looked like broken teeth, the Mathers, like everyone else in the country, were desperately tired of war.

“I’ve invited two American boys to dinner,” Carol informed the family one evening, early in that cold, dark month, as they were having their usual bedtime cup of weak tea while the wireless played classical music after the latest nine o’clock news broadcast—a mixture of dour reporting and desperate hope. “They’re coming here on Sunday, after church.”

“Americans?” Sophie paused with her cup halfway to her carmine-red lips, her ash-blond head cocked at an angle. “Where on earth did you meet them, Mother?”

“The vicar asked me to have them over. He’s taken an interest in some soldiers who have been billeted nearby until they’re shipped to a proper base. He’s invited a few to church, and asked me to have them for dinner, after. The poor boys are feeling lonely, as they might do. They could all use a good square meal, I should think.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “As if one can be found.”

“Home cooking,” Carol informed her older daughter, with a touch of severity. “That’s what I mean, Sophie, whatever I manage to serve. Home cooking and decent company.”

Lily watched her sister’s expression turn milkily bland. As much as she couldn’t resist a sharp retort, Sophie, Lily knew, would not risk the possibility of soldiers—and American ones at that—not coming to the house. Their presence would be something different; it held the promise of adventure, or at least of change. At the very least, a decent meal for everyone, since their mother would want to impress.

Her sister lowered her eyes over her teacup, now all meek docility. “What shall we serve them?”

Carol pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I was thinking I’d see if the butcher had an ox cheek. He usually can find one for me.”

Lily knew her mother went to great pains to keep on the right side of their butcher, Mr. Allen. It meant that he sometimes “found” ox cheeks and tongue and other non-rationed cuts of meat—ones they would have all turned their noses up at before the war—for the Mather family. While others were thickening their meat stews with porridge oats, Carol was braising a cow’s tongue in red wine.

“A barley soup to start, and an apple crumble for dessert. There are still some apples from the summer.” Carol smiled in satisfaction before taking another sip of her tea. Clearly it had all been decided.

Later, after she’d helped her mother with the washing up, both of them standing at the sink, working in companionable silence in the creaking, night-time quiet of the house, Lily found her sister upstairs in their bedroom, her head craned out the window as she smoked a cigarette. At least the lights were off, in accordance with blackout regulations, the pale light from a half-moon filtering in through the window and bathing the small room, with its matching twin beds and bureaus, in silver.

“What do you think to the Yanks, then?” Sophie asked. She leaned her head back against the window as she inhaled deeply, regarding Lily out of sleepily narrowed eyes.

Lily shook her head. “You know Mother doesn’t like you smoking.” Carol thought it was common, even though many young women smoked these days, at least when they could get cigarettes. Lily didn’t smoke; she didn’t know how, and she didn’t want to, anyway.

Sophie rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a bore, Lily, please. Do you suppose you could manage that for a moment?” Ther

e was a note of teasing affection to her sister’s voice that kept her words from being an insult.

“I know I’m a bore,” Lily replied with a small smile as she reached for her nightgown, tucked under her pillow. Her breath came out in a puff of frosty air, and she saw ice on the inside of the windowpanes. “Could you please close that window before you freeze us to death?”

“I’m almost done.” Sophie took another drag of her cigarette, which Lily suspected was one of those cheap, evil-smelling Spanish Shawls rather than from a pack of Player’s or Dunhill’s. Their mother would almost certainly smell it, just as Lily knew she would, as they all often did, and turn a rueful eye to Sophie’s minor misdemeanor.

Perhaps it was her sister’s irrepressible good humor, or maybe the fact that she made fun of herself as much as anyone else, but neither of her parents, nor Lily herself, ever took Sophie to task for the streak of wildness that ran through her like a tongue of fire. So far it had never singed anyone; it almost felt like a theory rather than a reality, a possibility rather than a promise. Sophie, Lily thought, was a good girl at heart—or perhaps she was wild at heart and a good girl on the outside. Either way, she didn’t get up to too much, although Lily suspected she wanted to. Still, she never dared.