Now, the sea was packed with ominous, hulking steel ships plotting their next move, poised in their strategic positions. Constance felt as though she could step from one of those great floating monoliths to the other, and jump off once she reached Portsmouth. Something was coming; it was something big, everybody sensed it. It was in the air being whispered about but never properly spoken of.
The folly, beside which she sat was still standing sentry, miraculously unscathed. Constance had always loved it, having grown up thinking of it as her miniature castle with its turrets at the top. She smiled now, thinking back to all the games of princesses imprisoned by a nasty witch being rescued by knights in shining armour that she and Norma had played here. Occasionally they’d managed to rope a real-life knight in, well that’s if you counted Jonathon Martin with his knobbly knees. She smiled recalling how those knees of Jonny’s were always bruised or grazed from his many boyish adventures, and how his socks used to sit in a woolly puddle around his ankles.
Poor Jonathan. The Martins had moved inland feeling it would be safer when the bombs began to rain down on Wight. A few short weeks after they moved, the cottage they’d relocated too suffered a direct hit from an incendiary as they slept. None of the Martins had survived. There’d been too much loss, Constance thought shuddering, far too much. Her brother Ted’s recent death, just on two months ago, was so very raw and close to the surface.
Ted was in the Forty-Sixth Infantry Division and had been killed in battle at Monte Cassino in January. He’d only left home a month earlier. Poor Teddy had been waiting with bated breath to turn eighteen to enlist. He would have lied about his age and sailed away long before then too if it wasn’t for Ginny. They’d been sweethearts since they were fourteen, having met when Ginny was sent from Southampton to Ryde at the start of the war to stay with an aunt and her family. Her father, a widower, was killed at the Portsmouth Dockyard soon after and so Ginny had stayed on Wight.
It was with the knowledge he’d be leaving that Ginny and Ted had gotten married a month before Teddy’s coming of age birthday. Ginny had made a beautiful bride although there were tense and tearful moments on her part in the prior weeks as to her dress. It was Constance’s elder sister Evelyn who’d come to the rescue in the end. Her friend Margaret’s cousin who’d gotten married before rationing had begun to bite had dug out her gown on the condition that Ginny pass it on to anyone else who should need it. Their mother, a seamstress, had altered it to fit her soon to be daughter-in-law’s petite frame and the white satin had hung beautifully on her in time for her big day.
And what a day it was. The sun had beamed down on the Downer family despite it being mid-winter, and the promise of a bright future had been palpable. Ginny had moved into Pier View House after the wedding, squeezing in alongside the rest of them, and it was as though she’d always been there. Then, four short weeks later it was time for Teddy to go. Constance closed her eyes conjuring up her precious last images of her brother. She liked to take them out and examine them as though giving them an airing would allow her to hang onto him that little bit longer.
They’d all gone down to the Pier to wave him off. Mum’s hair, she’d noticed as they milled around waiting to say their goodbyes, had more daubs of grey in it these days than the vibrant auburn of her youth. She’d set it in careful pin curls and was dressed in her Sunday best. A freshly pressed handkerchief now crumpled, clutched tightly in her hand as she dabbed at her eyes, all the while sniffing. Dad stood, stoic beside her. His hat was tilted at what he liked to think was a rakish angle. It was important to look the part in their line of business; he’d tell them all as he fiddled with the arrangement of his hat in the mirror that hung over the sideboard. A peacock if ever there was, their dad! He’d maintained a stiff upper lip and a ramrod back that day, unlike his wife, as he gave his eldest child, and only son, a nod farewell.
Evelyn who was the middle child of the three Downer children had dressed for the occasion too. She’d been busy eyeing the youngest Duff lad up, whose birthday had fallen the day before Ted’s. Constance was surprised to see how well he looked minus his butcher’s apron. She looked at him from under her lashes while he marched proudly alongside Ted down the Pier. Unlike her sister though she had the presence of mind to give no clues away as to where her mind might be wandering. Evelyn’s sharp intake of breath at the sight of Robert Duff, duffle bag slung over his shoulder looking impossibly handsome in his uniform earned her an elbow in the ribs from mum.
Then there’d been Ginny. She’d put such a brave face on things for Ted’s sake. She’d waved to him until Constance had thought her poor sister-in-law’s arm would drop off, but when the
