I wondered why she was being such a sourpuss, but then I saw that he, too, frosted over as she pushed her hand out to shake his.

“Well done, Mrs. Tilling,” he said noncommittally.

She flustered, embarrassed. “I didn’t realize you were among the judges. I really don’t know what—”

“Thank you for voting for us!” I said quickly, as it was a bit mean to question his judging ability when we’d just won.

He smiled warmly at me. “It was an easy choice, especially with your solo performances.” Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

Mrs. Tilling tried to ignore him, making a small hmph sound before turning to me and saying in a very forced way, “Come on, Kitty. And you, Silvie. We need to find Prim.” And making a bolt for the vestry.

The rest of the evening was a blur of congratulations, with cheers and patting on backs, and the other choirs pretending they were pleased for us. A journalist asked us how we felt being a women’s-only choir.

“We’re starting a new trend,” Venetia declared, preening before him. “We’re all the rage, didn’t you know?”

The man stood gawping at her until Mrs. B. barged in, saying, “We always believed we would win. Men or no men.” And we all nodded and smiled.

After a while, the crowds began to dwindle, and the Bishop had to shoo us out, so we made our jolly way back to the bus and set off jubilantly for Chilbury, singing all the way. But we didn’t sing “Ave Maria.” No, we sang old music hall songs, including my new favorite, “Can’t Get Away to Marry You Today, My Wife Won’t Let Me!”

IVY HOUSE, LITCHFIELD ROAD, CHILBURY, KENT.

Monday, 20th May, 1940

Dear Maud,

Apologies for my lack of contact, but I have been caught up with the recent events in Belgium and northern France. This letter comes to you from my new billet in Chilbury—have you been here on your travels? Please tell the girls to write to me here as letters to the MOD always get diverted via London. Do encourage them to write; frankly their letters are the only things that keep me going in this dreadful war. Once again, many thanks for looking after the three of them—I do hope they’re behaving themselves. I know that Vera would be happy knowing they are with you, God rest her soul. I can’t believe it is five years on Wednesday that she died. I can still hardly get used to the fact that she has gone.

I’ll be here for the summer, I’d imagine, probably beyond. The woman who owns the house, a Mrs. Tilling, is a nurse who seems to disapprove of everything and everyone, and especially me. She’s a stick of a woman with a never-ending supply of dull gray housecoats. Hardly speaks a word, except to give me polite orders, and has been particularly bad-tempered since I asked if I could have dinner at home, demanding my ration book and crashing pots around the kitchen in annoyance.

“I’d like it, Colonel Mallard,” she said crisply to me last night, “if you could let me know at what time you will be home for dinner.” I had only been an hour late the previous night.

Similarly, one evening I decided to move the small chest of drawers as it makes much better space if it goes in the nook beside the wardrobe. The next day it had been returned to its usual position, and I decided not to attempt any further furniture rearrangements.

But then on Saturday I was forced into being a judge for a choir competition, and would you believe it, she sang a solo, and it was so wonderful and expressive. It was as if she was a different person. I can’t make head or tail of her.

Most evenings when I come in, she disappears completely. I hear a door slam upstairs or see the curtain swing in the front room window as I approach. It would be nice to have some company, but I usually end up trudging upstairs to be by myself. Her son has just left for France, and she is openly resentful that I am staying in his room. There’s not much to be resentful about, if you ask me: a small, lumpy bed and a picture of the solar system on the wall—we are a tiny, self-destructive dot in a mass of gray blackness.

Enough for now. I’ll write to the girls Wednesday, after I’ve been to the church to say a prayer for Vera. I hope she’s watching down on us, keeping us safe.

Much love,

Anthony

Saturday, 25th May, 1940

The Eventful Picnic

Since it was such a heavenly morning, I decided that Silvie and I deserved a treat after our choir competition victory. I felt an urge to pretend—at least for one day—that the war wasn’t happening. So I flung open my bedroom window to feel the warm yellow sunlight on my face, smelling that fresh piney scent of a sumptuous spring morning. It was so utterly perfect that I decided to dedicate the day to a search for lost time, and to recapture some of my childhood.

On days like these before the war, we used to get dressed up and go on picnics with the Tillings or the Brampton-Boyds, the girls in summer frocks, the boys in smart suits. Proggett would get Cook, who has now left to make tanks in Tonbridge, to prepare a picnic luncheon packed with pies and cherries and madeleines. Mmm, the smell of those delicious buttery cakes always takes me back to waiting eagerly in the kitchen before tasting the first warm bite of the fresh cakes as they come off the cooling racks. Today we had to make do with Elsie putting some jam sandwiches together in a terrifically offhand manner, asking all kinds of questions about Henry.