Aunt Letitia Read online

  It was then – with the pavements glistening, and the cartwheels splashing through rivulets of water, and umbrellas disappearing like mushrooms at dawn – it was then that a young woman came darting round the corner from the Strand. She was not looking where she was going and ran smack into him, leaving them both reeling and gasping.

  ‘Goodness! I am sorry!’ The woman recovered her poise, laughed.

  She did not look particularly sorry, whatever she might say. She ought at least to show remorse, Hugh felt. It was all her fault, after all. He was not the one who had not been looking where he was going. He was aggrieved, but at the same time rather alarmed. She was a Woman. Hugh did not have much experience with Women.

  Then he looked more closely. The woman was in fact little more than a girl, only a couple of years older than him at the most. She appeared excited and nervous and kept looking over her shoulder, for all the world like a naughty child. Hugh drew himself up.

  The girl was tucking in strands of red hair that kept escaping from under her hat. ‘I must go.’

  The red hair stirred something in Hugh’s memory. ‘I say, aren’t you…?’ But the name was lost, and his voice petered out. His eyes were drawn down to her heaving bosom: she was very much out of breath.

  ‘Aren’t I what?’

  ‘I … I …’ Hugh stammered. He was quite unable to resist the allure of her breasts, rising and falling as she gulped for air. He felt like a cad; but the girl did not seem to notice.

  ‘I must go,’ she repeated, already moving away, would soon be swallowed by the crowds.

  Hugh did not want her to go. It was not just the red hair or the heaving bosom. There was something about her that gave him a warm feeling inside. Something to do with an act of kindness … a benevolent gift….

  ‘Raggety Peg!’ he suddenly blurted out.

  The girl turned and looked at him – looked at him properly for the first time. Her green eyes narrowed. ‘Hugh Benham,’ she said slowly, dredging up a deep-sunk name. ‘It is Hugh Benham, isn’t it? Well! Who’d have thought it? This is a coincidence and no mistake!’

  Hugh blushed. She remembered his name but he could still not remember hers and he felt at a disadvantage; but at least he knew now who she was. It was the Irish girl, the one who had so selflessly given him her tatty doll, back in the days when he’d been a hopeless little kid at The Firs.

  ‘I’m sorry; I really do have to go.’ She was backing away again, the distracted look back on her face. ‘The police …’

  It was then that Hugh heard the police whistles sounding in the Strand. The girl took to her heels.

  ‘Megan!’ At last her name came to him out of his confusion. He shouted it out, startling passers-by so that they turned to look at him with dubious expressions. But the girl ran like the wind, threading through the crowd, skirts flying. She was leaving him.

  There was a distant rumble. Crockery rattled on the dresser. The hum of aeroplanes grew louder. None of this could drown out the sound of his own youthful voice echoing inside Hugh’s head, shouting out Megan’s name like some lonely animal on a windswept tundra calling for its missing mate.

  He sipped his cocoa. It had grown cold as he sat there with his aunt, hiding from the German bombs, but he did not notice, lost in his memories. In his dreams over the years, Megan had always been running, running away from him. He could never catch her. She always appeared in those dreams just as she had been that day in Southampton Street: young, breathless, slightly dishevelled – and beautiful. It was a moment charged with significance. He had told himself the story of that day many times and he had come to believe that it had been at that very moment – when Megan collided with him in April 1912 – that he first realized that he loved her.

  At the time, it had seemed that he was likely to lose her almost as soon as he’d found her again. She had fled at the sound of the police whistles, and he had stood there wavering. Was it wise to get involved? Why were the police interested in her?

  ‘Come on!’ She had flung the words behind her as she ran.

  Don’t be such a sap! He had lashed himself, ashamed of being so pusillanimous. You wanted adventure. Here it is. Seize it while you have the chance!

  And so he had run – run at full pelt. He had put on one of those bursts of speed which, two months later, had made him champion over 100 yards at the school sports day; but fast as he was, he had not been able to catch Megan. She had always been a fraction ahead, leading him on as the hare leads the dog.

  Hugh looked up as the ack-ack guns in Hyde Park started booming. The noise outside was rising in a crescendo. Letitia turned her glass round and round on the table. The electric light flickered, dimmed, glowed bright again. Despite all this, Hugh found himself drifting back, leaving the basement kitchen to relive the headlong flight with Megan nearly thirty years before. They had left the police flat-footed and crossed Covent Garden, whirling past windows crammed with exotic fruits and vibrant flowers, clipping arms and legs, tripping over umbrellas and walking sticks, stumbling but not falling, dodging glaring faces, outrunning the angry voices.

  Hugh smiled, recalling the sense of exhilaration, the boundless energy of youth. Sometimes, during his rare visits to the capital in the long years between then and now, he had tried to retrace their steps, crossing Covent Garden at a more sedate pace, recognizing the brown tiled walls of the tube station in James Street but getting hopelessly lost in the maze of streets and alleys beyond. They had come to rest in a square that might have been Russell Square, or might not (after twenty years and more, it was impossible to say). What Hugh did remember clearly – this at least had not faded with time – was the glow on Megan’s cheeks and the glint in her eyes as she leant against the railings, laughing at him and hiccupping; so lovely that even now he felt a catch in his throat and a fierce pang of desire that not even the German bombers could extinguish.

  Megan looked up, her eyes dancing. One hand gripped a metal upright, the other was tucking loose hair under her hat. ‘Fancy meeting you! After all this time! It must be – how long? It was your expression I recognized first. So solemn. So mournful.’ She laughed, hiccupped, laughed some more. ‘How old are you now?’

  ‘Fifteen.’ Hugh begrudged telling her this. Fifteen had seemed very grown-up to him that morning, stepping off the train at Waterloo in search of adventure. But now, suddenly, he felt childish and gawky. It didn’t help that he was all hot and sweaty, his cheeks burning. Megan, by contrast, was glowing, looked incredibly alluring.

  He deflected attention away from himself by asking, ‘Why are you running away from the police?’

  ‘I’ve been breaking windows.’

  Hugh, all proper and high-minded, was shocked. ‘Breaking windows! Whatever for?’

  ‘To protest at the way women are treated by society and by the government. To draw attention to the fact that we are denied the right to vote. They go on, all these men, about the Home Rule Bill, rights for the Irish, rights for Ulster, but they do nothing about the subjugation of women. We want the Women’s Suffrage Bill and we want it now!’

  Light dawned. ‘You’re a suffragette.’

  ‘A soldier in the battle for equal rights.’ Megan struck a heroic pose, her eyes dancing.

  ‘But how will breaking windows help? It’s criminal damage.’

  ‘Criminal poppycock! Nothing will ever change unless we stand up and take action! Men will not willingly give up their long-held positions of privilege. They have to be forced into it. That is what our campaign is about. It’s not a spur of the moment thing, you know. Every action is carefully planned. There is a prearranged signal, simultaneous attacks followed by tactical withdrawal (also known as running away). Afterwards we meet up again at headquarters. But I shouldn’t be telling you this. You are a man. The enemy.’

  She laughed; but Hugh scowled. He held a very dim view of breaking the laws of the land, nor did he appreciate being addressed as if he was in a public meeting. Megan had used a pejorative tone
when speaking the word man. Hugh was affronted, felt that aspersions were being cast. Being a man was a serious business, not something to be laughed at. He was beginning to think he’d made a terrible mistake in following Megan so impulsively.

  Megan’s bright eyes were fixed on him. ‘Have you still got her?’

  ‘Got who?’

  ‘Raggety Peg, of course.’

  ‘No.’ Hugh blushed, feeling both silly and guilt-ridden. He had a sudden vision of the doll floating away from him down the stream, eyes to the heavens, apathetically indifferent to her fate. It was a vision that had haunted him for months as he endured the nightmares of Buckly Priory. He hated to think of that place, where he’d forever been known as Stinky Benham, the boy who owned a girl’s dolly. Girl had been a term of abuse at Buckley Priory. The boys there had casually cast aspersions on the value of femaleness. Hugh only realized that now. It was a new way of looking at things.

  The doll was not only a link with the past but also a symbol of kindness and generosity, a symbol which had inspired in him a dogged optimism: the fortitude to endure Buckley Priory and whatever else life had to throw at him (if indeed anything could be worse than that place…). He had always felt grateful to Megan for her quixotic gesture in giving him the doll. He tried to recall that gratitude now. He also told himself to stop feeling so inadequate. After all, there was only two years between them, and Megan very obviously came from a lower echelon in society. One had only to compare her clothes with his own expensive suit, made by his grandfather’s Savile Row tailor. Her frock had seen better days, the colours faded, the lace décolletage torn, the lace itself rather a dirty yellow. Hugh took stock of all this; but he also noticed the whiteness of her skin, and the curve of her breasts.

  He blinked and looked away.

  ‘I must go,’ said Megan.

  ‘Can I come with you?’ asked Hugh. The thought of her going off and leaving him was like a sharp pain. He realized he was fascinated by her still. That was why he had run after her. It was more than a sudden whim, it was more than a sense of adventure: it was something else entirely.

  ‘We are not allowed to bring men to headquarters.’ She looked at him, speculative. Hugh waited with bated breath. ‘We could meet later….’

  ‘Yes.’ Hugh let out his breath.

  ‘I’ll be at Piccadilly Circus at half past four.’

  With that she was gone, and Hugh was left to wait and wonder, standing in the middle of Russell Square just after midday in April 1912.

  Four o’clock had seemed an age away. Taking out his pocket watch, Hugh had watched the minute hand creeping round the dial but had been unsure if he wanted it to move faster or slower. He desperately wanted to see Megan again; but nerves were starting to get the better of him. Playing truant in London was all very well, but he had not stopped until now to think about the consequences. His grandparents, should they find out about it, would be very disappointed in him and would make a point of saying so. They would also disapprove of his associating with a girl such as Megan O’Connor. She was not quite our sort, they would say.

  But that didn’t matter. He was fifteen, old enough to make up his own mind. He didn’t much care what his grandparents thought. They were jolly enough in their way, but rather old-fashioned and dull. Adventures were kept well away from the fastidious portals of Overton Hall.

  None of this helped in solving the problem of what he would say to Megan when they met again. What could they possibly find to talk about? How could they even begin to bridge such a vast gap as ten years: more than half their lives? All he could think about were the things that divided them, not least votes for women and the breaking of windows.

  Doubts and fears had assailed him as he made his way through London streets to Piccadilly Circus, but he did not allow himself to be deflected from his purpose. Stronger than all his doubts was his desire to see Megan again. She filled his mind: the unruly red hair, the flashing green eyes, the way she laughed, her carefree manner. She had cast a spell on him. He was caught, and there was no escape.

  Hugh had prowled restlessly amongst the crowds, going round and round Piccadilly Circus as he awaited the appointed hour. He hadn’t been able to keep his unruly mind in order, had found himself staring up at Eros poised high above the fountain. What did things look like from up there? Presumably one would notice the hats more than anything, the tops of hats: caps and bowlers, top hats and straw boaters; wide-brimmed hats trimmed with ribbons and feathers and silk flowers; and smaller hats of more recent fashion. There was also the domed helmet of a policeman on point duty. Hugh had watched him conducting the traffic with grave self-importance – and why should he not feel important, wielding such power, motor cars and hansom cabs, bicycles and tricycles, carts and carriages, omnibuses for Clapham or Euston Road all dancing to his tune?

  Hugh glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes to go.

  He began searching the faces of passing women, looking for Megan and glimpsing her everywhere out of the corner of his eye: amongst the crowds that lingered under shop awnings as solitary drops of rain began to fall, or staring blankly from the top deck of an omnibus, or selling flowers from a vast pannier on the steps below Eros. But none of these girls was the real thing. The real Megan remained elusive.

  Worn out by waiting, Hugh sat on the edge of the fountain, trying for an appearance of nonchalance. Above the pediment of the London Pavilion a flag flapped in the rising breeze. The sun shone brightly, then faded. The spots of rain grew more persistent. Years passed.

  Megan was ten minutes late. She was more subdued than earlier and there was a dubious look in her eyes, as if she thought she might have made a mistake in coming. Hugh wrenched a smile onto his lips and tried to act the gentleman. He held the door open for her as they took refuge from the rain in a Corner House. He pulled her chair out for her. He deferred to her choices as to which cakes to have. All the time his heart was hammering and the blood throbbing in his cheeks.

  They forced out an awkward conversation. Hugh called her ‘Miss O’Connor’ and was scrupulously polite, trying to swallow his tea quietly, doing his best not to choke on his cream bun. He felt sure he was making a frightful ass of himself.

  It was only when their talk drifted back to their long-ago meeting at The Firs that they began to lose their reticence. Looking back from the thoroughly adult perspectives of fifteen and seventeen, they laughed at the absurd things they had said and done, amazed at their naivety, and impressed by how wise they had become. Hugh relaxed a little. He began to feel up to the task of asking some questions. He wanted to know about Megan – he wanted to know all about her; but she pre-empted him and he found that he was required to give an account of himself. What, for instance, was he doing in London?

  ‘I’m not really sure why I’m here.’ He laughed to cover his feelings of foolishness. Nothing on earth would make him admit to such a kiddish purpose as the seeking of adventures. ‘I am meant to be staying with a school chum. I got on the train at Southampton, but instead of getting off at Winchester, I rode all the way to Waterloo. I have wired my friend, who now thinks I am back at Overton, whilst my grandparents will assume I am with him.’

  ‘How completely wicked of you!’ said Megan with a gleam in her eye. ‘But what were you doing in Southampton? Do you live there now?’

  ‘No, I was there with my father and stepmother—’

  Megan interrupted. ‘Your stepmother? But of course, I remember now. When we met at Binley your mother had just died. You had been crying but you would not admit to it. I felt sorry for you – but not sorry enough. I did not know then what it feels like to lose one’s mother.’

  She smiled: a new sort of smile, sympathetic and intimate, bridging the gap across the table. Hugh blushed and despaired. He had done nothing but blush in front of her all day. She must think him such a little boy.

  ‘So your father remarried in the end. I have a vague impression of him, your father. Rather tall and forbidding with a military mous
tache. He must be a colonel or a general by now, I suppose.’

  Hugh shook his head. ‘He resigned his commission in 1902.’

  ‘But he was so cut out to be a soldier!’

  ‘So everyone thought; but apparently he always hated the army but never let on until after Mother had died. It was then that he decided to please himself instead of other people and do what he wanted for a change. Of course, his resigning rather upset all the plans. I was staying with my grandparents until such time as Father made arrangements for me to go back to India, but in the end I never did go back.’

  ‘What a shame! You talked so much about India. After you’d gone, I used to picture you in those exotic surroundings, just as you’d described them: a million miles from damp old England.’

  ‘You thought about me, then?’

  Megan laughed, crumbling her cake. ‘From time to time. I used to wonder if you were taking good care of Raggety Peg. I felt sure that you were.’

  She was looking up at him, her eyes gently mocking, and Hugh resigned himself to going red as a beetroot. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

  ‘Anyway, carry on with the story. Once your father left the army he came back to England to look after you, I expect.’

  ‘No,’ said Hugh, and he explained how his father had become a drifter, travelling aimlessly from one place to the next: from India to Malaya, then to Australia, New Zealand and South America. Months passed, then years. Hugh stayed on with his grandparents, an arrangement which had started as a temporary expedient and that grew to be permanent. Occasionally, a letter or postcard arrived bearing foreign stamps. Less frequently there would be an address where Hugh could send his reply poste restante.

  ‘That’s very sad,’ said Megan.