Eve shook her head. “Thanks, but I would rather walk. I need time to think . . . and to say goodbye to this place.”
Audrey sat down beside her on a wooden chair. “I’m so sorry for the selfish choices my mother made. I know my words can’t change anything, but I am truly sorry. Please, stay here at Wellingford with me for a while, Eve. You need to get away from the madness in London and take time to grieve. We both need—”
“I’m not going to run away and hide in the country.”
“That’s not what I meant. Just stay for a few days and—”
“We’re very different, Audrey. Your reaction is to scurry back to safety. Mine is to fight!”
Audrey wanted to deny it but knew Eve was right. “I pleaded with Mother to come to Wellingford, where it was safe, but she refused.”
Eve didn’t seem to hear her as she stared at her empty teacup. “War has taken everyone—first Daddy and now Mum. I have no one left. At least you still have your father and Alfie.”
“Oh, Eve.”
“Well, I’m fighting back! I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but now my mind is made up. I’m enlisting.”
“I thought you already were volunteering.”
Eve waved her hand as if canceling Audrey’s words. “I sit beside a telephone for the fire service. It isn’t enough! I’m going to join the ATS and drive an ambulance or a lorry or . . . or something! I’m not going to sit in an office and type all day, then huddle in a shelter all night. I need to fight!”
Anger stirred inside Audrey, too. Her mother was dead, her town house in ruins. If Alfie and Eve could do their bit, then she could, too. Passing out blankets and bandaging cuts no longer seemed like enough. She could be courageous with Eve beside her. “I’ll enlist with you.”
“Ha! That I’d like to see!”
Audrey could forgive Eve’s disdain. Her grief was speaking.
“I mean it, Eve. I don’t want to sit in Wellingford Hall all alone until the war ends.”
“If it ever does.”
“We’ve both lost our mothers. We both should fight back. Together. Like we did at Dover during the evacuation. And you aren’t all alone, Eve. You still have me. And Alfie.”
Eve stared at her for a long moment. Then she pulled Audrey into her arms and they wept together. “I’m sorry, Audrey . . . I’m so sorry for the things I said . . .”
“Never mind. We’ll get through this together. We’ll grieve together. From now on we’re sisters. We’ll stay together no matter what. In the good times and the bad. Until the war ends—and forever after that.”
“I can’t imagine an ‘after.’”
“I can’t either. But whatever happens, Eve, we’ll face it together.”
Eve’s mind raced with all of the things she needed to do as she walked to the village train station. Unless Audrey changed her mind, they would enlist together in the Army’s Auxiliary Territorial Service next week. In the meantime, Eve needed to resign from her job at the ministry and as a fire service volunteer, pack her meager belongings, and say goodbye to her flatmates.
The train arrived, crowded with men in uniform. If only the Army would let women fight with real guns and weapons. Eve would be fearless like her daddy had been. After all, she had nothing left to lose.
She was still thinking about her daddy as the train chugged into Victoria Station in London, and mourning the loss of his photograph in the rubble of the town house. Granny Maud’s picture of the Good Shepherd had also been destroyed along with any faith Eve might have had in Him. The ARP wardens promised she would be allowed to pick through the ruins but she wasn’t hopeful of finding anything.
Eve had planned to take the Underground to her flat, but she rode to the Westminster station instead. Big Ben chimed the half hour as she emerged into the cold daylight and crossed busy Bridge Street to Westminster Abbey.
She felt alone in the vast hall as she made her way to the Unknown Warrior’s grave. She gazed down at the dark slab, dry-eyed, emptied of tears.
“You’re all together now, Daddy,” she murmured. “You, Granny Maud, and Mum.”
She’d visited this grave often since moving to London and always sensed that her daddy was near, that he was listening. But not today. Today, the grave was merely a black marker in the middle of the vast stone floor. She was alone.
15
ATS MOTOR TRANSPORT TRAINING CENTER, DECEMBER 1940
Audrey pricked her finger yet again on the sewing needle, drawing blood. She fought to control her tears. In the week that she and Eve had spent in the ATS training camp, Audrey was always fighting tears. She hadn’t imagined anything could be this hard. It was bad enough that on their first day in the Army they were marched into the latrine, six girls at a time, and given only sixty seconds to finish what they needed to do. But the snickers and lewd comments from the lower-class girls, who had pegged Audrey at first sight as an aristocrat, made the experience worse.