At the time, the ball for David and Wallis appeared to open a door for Ginie. It seemed to promise that she was finally on the brink of the recognition and validation she craved. But as months passed and the world started to darken with the threat of war with Germany, she realised that the ball was the supreme moment. Nothing else would come close.

22 The Courtaulds, Eltham, 1940s

22

The Courtaulds, Eltham, 1940s

Ginie sat on a bench, taking a break from gardening. Her back ached, there was earth jammed under her fingernails and painful blisters forming on both palms. She sipped tea from a flask and watched fleecy clouds drift across the sky. They were strange shapes: submarines and punctuation marks, fins that could have belonged to fish or aeroplanes. The random doodles of a capricious deity.

She wished that they’d had more time to enjoy Eltham. The few years between getting settled and the outbreak of war had disappeared so quickly, leaving almost nothing to hold on to. They had a few tinselly parties and a social position that was tenuous at best. And now, life had changed utterly. The parties had stopped. Several of their friends had joined up and it felt inappropriate, if not downright unpatriotic, to carry on entertaining. Besides, most of the staff had gone, either to fight or to work on the ‘home front.’ Before the war, there were eight live-in staff and fifteen gardeners. Now, only the cook, the butler and one cleaner were left and the grounds and garden had the services of two old men, helped by Ginie.

They were doing a pretty good job of keeping everything going. A large section of the garden had been given over to growing vegetables, which thrived. They produced more than they could eat and the cook bartered what they didn’t need for extra eggs, and sometimes meat or chicken.

Ginie shivered and pulled the belt of her coat tighter. She was always cold these days. Fuel rationing made it hard to heat such a large house – Jongy’s cage was the only snug room in the whole palace. In the distance, she could hear the drone of an approaching aeroplane. They were used to planes passing overhead, but as this one grew nearer, she realised that it sounded unusually low. She sat forwards, scanning the horizon and saw a Hawker Hurricane flying not more than fifty feet above her head.

It seemed to be going slowly and when it was almost directly above her, she could see the pilot quite clearly. She saw his brown helmet and goggles. She couldn’t make out his eyes, but the determined set of his shoulders expressed fierce concentration. The plane passed. She listened to the sound of its engines fading and dwindling to nothing. Anxiety tugged at her belly. It was the same feeling she’d experienced on one of her rare visits to church last Sunday, during the vicar’s sermon.