The Chilbury Ladies' Choir(108)

I sat gazing at him for a long moment.

“I need time to think it over. I’m not one of those people who can jump into something new straightaway.” I leaned into him, tucking my hand behind his neck and bringing him close. “And yet,” I began, pausing for a moment with the truth of it. “I’m not sure I can just let you leave.”

We sat there for some while, on the kitchen floor, holding hands and kissing, talking about it all—the war, David, his girls—until the sirens went off at around two, and we headed downstairs to the cellar.





Friday, 6th September, 1940





An Unexpected Wedding


What an extraordinary week this has been! With astounding decisiveness, Mrs. Tilling married the Colonel yesterday in our little church before they vanished off to London. I know whirlwind weddings are the thing at the moment, since we don’t know if we’ll all be here from one week to the next, but I was impressed with Mrs. Tilling making such a forthright move. She stepped forward to conduct the Chilbury Ladies’ Choir one final time during the ceremony, choosing “All Creatures of Our God and King,” a magnificent smile across her face as we sang the words:

Thou burning sun with golden beam,

Thou silver moon with softer gleam.



Mama threw a party of sorts for them afterward, a few cucumber sandwiches and cardboard cake, as usual. Yet there was a joviality about the place, as if our choir felt somehow responsible for giving Mrs. Tilling a new lease on life.

“It’s what we have to do these days, Kitty,” she said as she kissed me good-bye. “You need to find where you fit in this world, where you are happiest, where you can make a difference. And don’t be afraid of change.”

“But you can make a difference here in Chilbury,” I told her. “You don’t need to go to London.”

“I’ve done what I can here, and now it’s time to go and help out elsewhere.” She smiled in a way I don’t think I’d ever seen—not like her usual caring smile, or her polite smile, but a whole deeper level of smile, as if radiating a force of sunlight breaking through a stormy sky.

“We’ll miss you—you will write to me, won’t you?”

“I will. And you keep the choir going. I know you will, though, but somehow it seems a lot to be asking a thirteen-year-old.”

“I’m almost fourteen,” I snapped. “And I’m planning on taking the choir to bigger and better things. Just you wait.”





The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir


With Mrs. Tilling leaving, the choir voted for me to take over concert planning, which is an extraordinary honor. To her utter relief, Mrs. B. was finally voted to take over the conducting, so she and I have become quite a team, visiting bombed towns to offer our services. Can you believe that the Mayor of Dover has asked us to perform there? They’ve had more than their fair share of bombs and hundreds of people are now homeless. Mrs. Quail and I have started collecting blankets for them.

I’m sure there’ll be other places in need of our blankets and singing concerts soon, as there seems to be a never-ending stream of Nazi planes flying over to bomb us, our Spitfires fighting fiercely back. They’re saying that the more we shoot them down, the less likely they are to invade, so we’re putting our all into it.





Our New Additions


Now that we have two babies in Chilbury Manor, Mama and Nanny Godwin are busy all the time. Mama is overjoyed, of course. They’re like twins as they were born on the same day, except they couldn’t be more different—Rose all cheerful and angelic and Lawrence small and perplexing. Silvie has been helping to look after them, saying it reminds her of looking after her baby brother. She still has that wistful look but has been talking more, and has attached herself to Mama quite fiercely. Silvie and I have been busy planning our expedition across Europe after the war to find her parents and her brother. She said she’ll show me around her old house and neighborhood, and has begun to tell me more about her life. How lovely it was before this horrid war began.





News from the Shop


The village shop was bustling again with news this morning. Ralph Gibbs has bought the old mansion across the square, Tudor Grange. It must have cost a lot, and no one knows where he got the money, as surely the black market isn’t doing all that well. Quite the village lord he is now, with Mrs. Gibbs saying she’s to sell the shop. Elsie is glued to him, the attraction now more obvious. I can’t help wondering if it has something to do with the money that we found with Tom.





Tom’s Departure


Sadly, Tom is returning to London as his school is starting up again (as is ours in Litchfield). He promised to write to me, and if he doesn’t I’ll be incredibly cross as Silvie and I have both become quite fond of him. He says he’ll miss us, too, and he’ll be back next year, if not before for a visit.





The Newcomer


We have another newcomer to our village, and quite a character she is, too, with her shoulder-length wavy hair brushed back like she’s spent too long on a very windy cliff or has undergone a tremendous shock. She’s older than Venetia, maybe even thirty, and taller, too, wearing a tweed skirt and striding around looking at everything with determined interest like an unruly horse.