The Last Lifeboat

PART ONE – DEPARTURE

1

Four months earlier

Kent. May 1940

As she often did in a time of crisis, Alice King turned to books. While others were determined to dance and knit their way through the war, Alice intended to read her way through it, especially over the next few days during the annual family trip to Dover. The prospect of spending time with her awful cousins was bad enough, but it was the reason for the visit, the anniversary it marked, that filled her with dread. She was debating whether a second Dickens would see her through the ordeal, or whether Jane Austen was the woman for the job, when Maud said she would be off then.

‘Try to enjoy yourself, Alice. Even a little.’

Alice settled on Austen. She lifted the book from the shelf with a weary sigh. ‘Thank you. I’ll try. At least I’ll see Kitty.’ The thought of seeing her sister drew a smile from Alice’s lips. Dear Kitty. Alice wondered (and dreaded) what her latest news would be.

‘She’s dragging herself away from her beloved London after all then?’ Maud pulled on her coat, despite the warm day. ‘I can’t see the appeal. All that traffic and noise, and the possibility of air raids.’

Alice agreed. She much preferred the open spaces of Kent’s rolling landscapes, the big starlit skies, the audible breaths of the sea. ‘Kitty and London were made for each other. She only laughs when I worry about her being there, but you know what she’s like. She’s having a bit too much fun if you ask me, apparently oblivious to the fact that there’s a war on! Hopefully a weekend by the sea will blow a bit of sense back into her.’

‘And maybe Kitty will blow a bit of nonsense back into you.’

‘What do you mean?’

Maud hesitated as she turned in the doorway. As the former headmistress of the local school she knew Alice well, first as a pupil, and, more recently, as one of her teachers. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, dear, and I know it’s a difficult occasion for you, but maybe a weekend with your sister is exactly what you need. I remember a time when it was you who was the adventurous one, always with a plan to go somewhere and do something. Everything doesn’t always have to be so serious, even if Hitler is breathing down our necks.’ She offered an encouraging smile and buttoned her coat. ‘Anyway, I’ve said my bit. See you in a few days. And don’t forget to leave the key under the geranium.’

As the bell above the library door settled, Maud’s words niggled and nagged at Alice. She was the serious, sensible one, reluctant to step outside the familiar, while Kitty lived such a vibrant, almost fictional, life in comparison. And Maud was right. It hadn’t always been that way, but Alice rarely thought about the girl who had been full of wild ideas and plans for great journeys – and wasn’t even sure she’d recognize her if she met her now.

Alice took longer than was necessary to finish up, finding any number of ways to delay the journey to Dover. Her brother, Walter, was driving, and their mother wanted to be away before three. She shelved the last of the day’s returns and tidied the display of Ministry leaflets. Her hand stilled for a moment as she considered the grim progress of war. Their array of advice on all manner of things, from how to identify different types of poison gas to the unbearable business of how to humanely exterminate the family pet, was increasingly alarming. Alice remembered how appalled everyone had been when the first leaflets were issued after the announcement of war. Now, eight months on, and with the threat of Nazi invasion drawing ever closer, war had crept into every corner of life until Ministry leaflets were ten a penny, and the once unimaginable had somehow become the inevitable.

Before she left, she put up the blackout screens and took a moment to savour the musty silence. She loved this little library with all her heart, loved the brackish breeze that whispered through the gaps in the rotten old woodwork of the mullioned windows, loved that it was now home to a small collection of literary treasures sent secretly from London for safekeeping until the war was over. She wished she could put herself in safekeeping in the library until the war was over, burrow between shelves heavy with books whose endings were long imprinted on her. Yes, books were safe and certain. The world beyond the library walls was anything but.

Alice’s stomach churned as Walter turned the car into the familiar driveway of their grandmother’s house in St Margaret’s Bay. She loved her grandmother dearly, but hated this forced occasion of sombre remembrance. She didn’t need to come here to remember her father. She remembered him – thought about him – every day. The particular date and circumstances of his death were something she wished she could forget.

‘We’re going down to the beach,’ Kitty announced, grabbing Alice’s hand as they stepped out of the car. ‘We’ll be back in time for dinner.’

Before their mother could reply, and with Walter happy to leave his sisters to catch up on the latest gossip, the two of them ran off, just as they had as young girls, the sea breeze tying knots in their hair as they’d pulled off their shoes and socks and ran to the water. Alice was relieved to escape the stuffy formalities of the house and head toward the small beach a short walk away. Her heart felt instantly lighter at the sight of the sea ambered by the afternoon sun, at the sense of possibility and freedom she always felt when she was near the water. ‘Imagine where we might go, Alice! Imagine where all the world’s oceans might take us!’ As she recalled her father’s words, spoken over their last game of chess, she heard the echo of a life that wasn’t hers anymore, and as she looked toward the coastline of France, clearly visible in the distance, she imagined Hitler looking back at Dover’s majestic white cliffs, carefully working out the next move in his own sinister game. His recent invasion of France and the Low Countries had brought the war terrifyingly close to England’s doorstep.

‘Do you really think he’ll invade?’ Alice aimed a pebble across the unusually calm water of the English Channel, but her technique was terrible, and rather than skipping across the surface, it sank without trace. ‘I know everyone’s expecting it, but I still can’t believe it will happen. Not here. Not to us.’

Kitty laughed at her sister’s pitiful attempt. ‘You need to get down lower and flick from the wrist as you throw. Look. Like this.’ Kitty’s pebble skipped elegantly, six times, across the water. ‘See. It’s easy.’ Kitty made everything look easy. She was the swan of the family, effortless and graceful. Alice had always felt like a waddling mother duck beside her. ‘And, yes. I suspect he will invade,’ Kitty continued. ‘The question is: When? Hopefully not tonight anyway. Invasion would be bad enough. Getting stuck here with Cousin Lucy would be truly horrifying.’

Alice soon tired of skimming pebbles and looked for shells instead as they started to walk along the shoreline together. ‘I hate being in this constant state of almost-war, always wondering, always on high alert.’ If Hitler did invade, the south coast counties of Kent and Sussex would be the first to see the Nazi flags. Her stomach heaved at the thought. ‘It’s so awful, isn’t it, to think that just twenty miles of sea separates us now.’

Kitty linked her arm through her sister’s. ‘Your problem is you’ve had too much time to think about things since the children left.’

Alice had certainly missed her busy days in the classroom since the school had closed last September following the announcement of war. She missed the unpredictable exuberance of the children, their curious minds, their innocence. Teaching was a demanding job, but one she loved. She was good with children – they often made more sense to her than adults – and had quietly hoped to take her teaching experience further and apply for a position at the prestigious Benenden Girls’ School. But the evacuation of children from coastal towns to the countryside had interrupted her plans. Still, Alice hoped the possibility might return along with the children, whenever this was all over.

‘You must be bored silly, stuck at home with Mother,’ Kitty said. ‘I honestly don’t know how you stand it.’

‘I don’t have much choice, do I? You know she doesn’t manage well when she’s on her own.’

Kitty shook her head. ‘I know she’s taken advantage of your good nature for far too long, more like. She can’t expect you to stay with her in Whitstable forever.’

‘I don’t intend to stay there forever. And I’m not stuck at home. I’m volunteering at the library in case you’d forgotten.’

Kitty laughed lightly. ‘Oh yes. Read for Victory! Isn’t that your slogan? I sincerely doubt books are going to save us if Hitler does come marauding over the Channel. What will you do, fire Shakespeare at him from a cannon? Death by a Dickens and two Austens?’

‘It doesn’t sound like a bad way to go. And, actually, it’s books we need to save from him. Anyway, you shouldn’t scoff. There’s a lot to be said for reading a good book and forgetting about the bloody war for a while. Entertainment is good for morale. People need a way to distract themselves. Talking of which, how did it go with Terry?’

‘It’s Terence, and he was a charming distraction until an air raid interrupted things. False alarm, as it happened, but it rather ruined the moment.’

Alice laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose it would!’

‘Anyway, it’s you who needs a Terence, not me!’

‘I had one, briefly. And we both know how that turned out. I’m perfectly happy without a man to complicate things.’

Kitty grabbed Alice’s hands. ‘Patrick Swift was a rotten swine. Not all men are like him – some are actually rather lovely – and time isn’t exactly on your side. You’ll be thirty soon, for goodness’ sake!’

‘Not for another two years. And thirty isn’t that old.’

‘It’s ancient!’ Kitty laughed and threw her arms skywards in exasperation. ‘Don’t you ever wonder, Alice? Where else? What else? Who else? You’re such an odd thing, content in your narrow little life.’

‘Ouch!’ Kitty’s words landed on Alice like nettle stings. She knew her life must seem small and dull compared to Kitty’s vibrant existence in London, sharing a flat with other girls, dancing at weekends, working for a new government department in Mayfair. But life didn’t always feel narrow to Alice. Mostly, it felt familiar. Comfortable. Safe. Or at least it had until Hitler had invaded France. ‘Am I really that dull?’

‘Yes!’ Kitty pulled Alice affectionately into her side as they turned and made their way back toward the house. ‘Well, not always. You’re occasionally dull,’ she concluded. ‘Mostly, I think you’re afraid.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of change. Of doing something different. Being someone different. I want you to do something, Alice. Something reckless and unexpected. Something brave. Run away and join the bloody circus if you must, just promise me you won’t spend the rest of your life rotting away at Willow Cottage with Mother like a wizened old Bramley.’

‘Goodness, Kitty. Narrow and dull, a wizened old Bramley – are there any other insults you’d like to throw at me?’ Alice punched Kitty’s arm fondly.

Kitty laughed. ‘Plenty more insults where those came from, but I’ll save them for our cousins.’

But deep down, Alice knew Kitty was right. Her work at the library, surrounded by books, filled her heart with joy, but part of her longed to do something reckless and unexpected and brave. She just didn’t know what, or how.

A loud whistle caught their attention. Alice turned to see Walter waving from the path, indicating that they should come back now. He was so like their father that, for a moment, she could almost believe it was him, waving his daughters back up from the beach, a proud smile on his face.

‘Come on. Race you back!’ Kitty set off at a sprint. ‘Last one there has to sit beside Cousin Lucy at dinner!’

Alice followed in futile pursuit. ‘That’s not fair! Katherine King, you’re a terrible cheat!’

As they ran, a brisk sea breeze ballooned out their skirts and sent Kitty’s hat tumbling wildly along the sand. They chased it and laughed until their sides hurt, and for a few carefree moments, the prospect of German invasion was forgotten. That was the exasperating thing about the war. It was everywhere and everything, and yet it was nowhere and nothing. It was an impossible riddle, a puzzle without a solution.

After dinner that evening, Alice excused herself with an imaginary migraine. She lay awake in the small guest bedroom beneath the eaves, listening to the rattle and creak of the rafters as a summer storm rolled in across the south coast. Her father had always loved a good storm. He’d taught her not to be afraid as they’d counted the seconds between the roll of thunder and the crack of lightning, calculating how close it was and then how far away as the seconds reassuringly increased, and the storm passed.

But some storms never left. The aftermath of his death still rumbled and roared, and grief still raged in Alice’s heart as she counted the seconds and willed the winds to settle and the storm to blow itself out.

2

London. May 1940

Lily Nicholls hardly noticed the blossom that spring. It didn’t last long anyway, scattered by unseasonal winds that easily blew such fragile things away and carried the ugly business of war, and Hitler, ever closer in return. Like most Londoners, Lily was jittery. The air-raid warnings in her South London terrace had, so far, been false alarms, but elsewhere, people weren’t so lucky. Recent reports of civilian casualties in the Netherlands were truly awful. It was unimaginable, and yet the facts were unavoidable, printed in the newspaper alongside cheering advertisements for Bourneville cocoa and HP sauce, because life carried on, even when it didn’t.

In the small back kitchen of 13 Elm Street, Lily absorbed the latest awful news with her heart in her mouth. She read out the occasional line or two from the newspaper. Mrs Hopkins, her neighbour, tutted and sighed and said war was a terrible, terrible thing. ‘And they’re talking about another wave of evacuation,’ she added as she rolled out an unappealing grey circle of potato pastry for a Homity pie. ‘Sending the kiddies overseas this time. They’ll have us all shipped off to the moon next.’

Lily glanced up from the newspaper. ‘They can talk all they want. I won’t be sending Georgie and Arthur away again. Although Georgie has her heart set on going to Australia for some reason. Honestly, that girl will be the death of me with her plans and schemes!’

Mrs Hopkins put down her rolling pin and poured two cups of tea from the dribbly teapot. She treated Lily’s kitchen as if it were her own, and Lily encouraged it. She enjoyed the company, even if she didn’t always enjoy the resulting pies. Lily was terribly fond of Mrs H, as she called her. Like the Russian nesting dolls that stood on the sideboard in the front room, the woman had a seemingly endless supply of herself, always ready to cheer someone up, or lend them an ear, or make them a pie when they couldn’t summon the energy to make it themselves. She’d been especially kind in the immediate aftermath of Peter’s death. Mrs H hadn’t gossiped and speculated behind Lily’s back, or avoided her, like others had, as if Peter’s death was something you could catch. Lily would be forever grateful to her for that.

Lily licked her thumb and turned the pages as she looked for the crossword puzzle, but her hands stalled as she read another awful headline.

‘What’s wrong?’ Mrs Hopkins asked. ‘Lil? You’ve gone ever so pale.’

‘It says here that a civilian liner has sunk in the Atlantic with heavy loss of life after a torpedo strike from a U-boat.’ The unterseeboots frightened Lily even more than the thought of bombs falling from the sky. At least bombing raids came with a warning and gave you time to run for cover. U-boats lurked beneath the water. There was nowhere to shelter at sea. She folded the paper and tossed it into the pile for collection. She didn’t want to read any more news. ‘Bloody Germans. They’re everywhere.’

‘Who’s everywhere?’ Arthur ran into the kitchen and proceeded to hop on one foot around the table. Hopping was his latest fad, and a welcome relief from his previous fascination with walking backwards. ‘Are the rotten Nazis here?’ He fired an imaginary machine gun at Mrs Hopkins for good measure.

‘Arthur! Don’t do that.’

Lily’s voice carried an edge that surprised her and brought her son to a sudden stop. She hated to see him play-act war so easily. She especially hated him mimicking gunfire. The war had made such staunch British patriots of those who were too young to fully understand what they were saying. ‘Nazis’. ‘The Bosch’. ‘Jerry’. ‘Fritz’. It sounded wrong coming from such innocent voices.

‘Tickles, Arthur,’ Lily said, brightening her tone as she pulled him onto her lap and squeezed his skinny knees until he wriggled and giggled. ‘Tickles are everywhere. There’s no escaping them!’ He didn’t shriek and writhe as much as he had when Peter had tickled him with his great hands, or when he’d hoisted Arthur up onto his shoulders in a dramatic swooping arc, but Lily did her best. She did her best to fill all the gaps Peter had left behind.

Georgie arrived at the back door a few minutes later, red in the face after playing skipping games in the heat. She was such a determined, athletic child. Lily really had no idea where she got it from, coming from such un-sporty parents. She loved the solid bones of her, loved every freckle on her flushed cheeks.

‘Get a drink of water, Georgie, for goodness’ sake. You look as if you’re about to combust! I can feel the heat coming off you from the other side of the table.’

Georgie gulped a glass of water, burped (which rendered Arthur helpless with laughter), and pulled her latest treasures from her pinafore pockets. She proudly displayed them on the kitchen table. ‘Three feathers, two nice stones and a piece of coloured glass.’

Lily said she would look at them properly after tea. ‘You’ll have enough feathers to make your own bird soon! And please take them off the table. You don’t know where they’ve been. A rat could have been at them.’

‘A filthy German rat.’

‘Arthur!’

‘The Nazis are everywhere, Georgie.’ Arthur fired a pretend gun at his sister. ‘They’re sneaking around in their torpedoes, killing everyone.’

‘Arthur! That’s enough.’ Lily hated to hear him going on like this, talking of Nazis and death so casually.

Georgie laughed at her brother’s mistake. ‘They’re not sneaking around in torpedoes, silly! Their submarines are called U-boats. The torpedoes are what they fire out of them.’

Lily had heard enough. ‘Children! Honestly. Go outside and find something useful to do. Play hopscotch. Or find a tree to climb.’

‘I thought you said it was dangerous to climb trees.’

‘It isn’t half as dangerous as getting under my feet when I’m trying to make tea, Georgie Nicholls! Now off you both go.’ Lily shooed them out with her apron and shooed Mrs H’s cat out with them.

When they’d gone, Mrs Hopkins said she was happy to sit in with the children any time. ‘If you want to go out dancing, or anything. Have a change of scenery.’

Lily smiled. ‘You’re very kind, Mrs H, but I’m happy to leave the dancing to other people for now.’

‘It might do you good, you know. I understand life is very different for you now, dear, but you’re far too young and pretty to be sitting around here waiting for the gas rattle.’

Lily scoffed at the notion. She didn’t feel young, or pretty. She felt much older than her thirty years, even though people were always surprised to discover she had a ten-year-old daughter – ‘You don’t look old enough!’ They wouldn’t say it now. The last few months had aged her beyond her years.

Mrs Hopkins put the pie in the oven and gave Lily’s hand a squeeze. ‘Well, the offer stands if you change your mind. Why not pretend you’re going out, at least? Put on a nice dress and pour a sherry. We might be thinking about bloody potatoes morning, noon and night, but we don’t need to look like one, too!’

Lily promised to do her best not to look like a potato. In her heart, she knew Mrs H was right. Peter would want her to go dancing. He loved to dance, loved to take her out all dressed up and smelling of Yardley roses. She remembered how she used to give a little twirl when she’d finished getting ready. ‘Will I do?’ she would ask, and Peter would tilt his head to one side and smile and say, ‘You’ll do and a half! Who’s the lucky man?’

That evening, not long after blackout, Lily made her way upstairs. The nights were long and lonely now. She was tired of the relentless cheer of the comedy shows on the wireless, tired of the news, tired of knitting and sewing. She’d taken to reading by candlelight until she eventually felt sleepy. Not that she slept well. It was almost impossible to relax. She flinched at every sound, and frequently got up to check on the children. Her nights now passed in a restless pattern of fear and worry as she watched the sky and longed for the reassuring hue of daylight.

As she looked in on the children, she found Georgie still awake.

‘Can’t sleep, love?’

‘Arthur’s talking in his sleep again.’

Arthur was fully out of his sheets and half-dangling over the side of the bed. Lily lifted him back in, turned his pillow and kissed his hot little cheek.

She sat on the edge of Georgie’s bed then and smoothed the hair from her forehead, just as she had when she was a baby. She smiled at the memory of the tiny terrifying bundle the midwife had handed to her: velvet hair, seashell ears, peach melba cheeks. Peter had said she was the most perfect thing he’d ever seen.

‘Are you frightened, Mummy?’

‘Of what, love?’

‘Of the Germans. Harry Gilbert said they’ll make us say Heil Hitler and talk in German, and I don’t know any German words apart from Luftwaffe and Nazi. What if I get into trouble?’

Lily tutted. ‘Don’t you mind Harry Gilbert. He’s a horrid boy, saying such things. You won’t have to speak in German. And no, I’m not frightened. The brave men won’t let them invade.’

‘Brave men like Daddy?’

Lily’s breath caught in her throat as she bent to kiss Georgie’s forehead. ‘Yes, love. Brave men like Daddy.’

To Georgie and Arthur, their father was a hero. Lily had made absolutely sure of that.

When Georgie had finally settled, Lily went to her own bedroom and lay on top of the bed sheets in the dark. She imagined Peter beside her, imagined the soft rise and fall of his chest. She reached out her hand to his side of the bed and wrapped her fingers around the unbearable void. It wasn’t just his absence, but the fact that he would never lie there again. Ever. It was impossible to comprehend, impossible to accept.

In the silence, she let her mind wander back to the bright February morning when delicate frost lacework had decorated the windowpanes and the biting cold had sent roses blooming in her cheeks as she’d watched him leave. She didn’t know then that it was the last time she would see him, but she was glad now that she’d stood on the doorstep a moment longer, glad she’d noticed the dimples in his cheeks, the strands of gold in his hair, the pause as he’d turned to look over his shoulder. She still wondered what he was going to say, and why, in the end, he didn’t say anything, but walked quietly away, without looking back.

3

Kent. May 1940

Alice endured the three days in Dover with the help of Kitty’s good humour and Walter’s calming dependability. She knew the closeness between the three of them irritated their mother and wasn’t a bit surprised when she took the opportunity of the confined car journey back to Whitstable to share her frustration and disappointment with them all.

‘There must be something useful you can do, Alice, besides sorting library books,’ her mother pressed from the passenger seat. ‘You should join the Red Cross. People will think you’re trying to avoid doing your bit, and we’ve quite enough of that with your brother making a disgrace of us all by declaring himself a Conscientious Objector.’

From the driver’s seat, Walter rolled his eyes at Alice through the mirror. Like their father, Walter was a gentle giant, but he was also stubborn and decisive. Alice respected his decision not to sign up, even if it hurt her to hear the cruel names and accusations of cowardice he endured. ‘You have to back yourself, Alice,’ he’d said when she’d asked him how he could stand it. ‘Of course, it would be easier to sign up, but easy isn’t always right, and life isn’t always perfect. Real life is lived in all the messy difficult bits.’ Walter was the glue that had held Alice together since their father died. In her eyes, he would never be a coward.

‘Or why not do the civil defence training and become an ARP warden, like your cousin?’ her mother continued. She’d been easily impressed by Cousin Lucy’s tiresome monologues about what the role involved.

On and on it went. What about this? Why not that? As usual, Alice’s mother saw her as a problem that needed to be fixed. Alice stared out at the sea and wished she could sail away to some distant land where she didn’t have to be anything.

They continued the journey in frosty silence until Kitty tried to lighten the mood by talking about her new job.

‘There’s an awful girl in the typing pool, and you honestly wouldn’t believe how often some of the men’s hands stray. It’s like working with a load of octopus. Or is it octopuses? Maybe it’s octopi? If it isn’t, it should be.’

It was such a ridiculous thing to say that the three siblings burst into laughter, which irritated their mother even more because she couldn’t understand what on earth was so amusing.

‘Are you enjoying anything about the job?’ Alice asked, grateful for the break in the tense atmosphere as she wiped tears of laughter from her cheeks.

‘The uniform’s nice,’ Kitty said. ‘Navy skirt and cream blouse. I’m mostly typing up responses to letters of enquiry so far, but Tony has told us to prepare for a deluge of applications when we officially open next month. He’ll be talking about it on the wireless next week.’

‘Who’s Tony?’ Walter asked.

‘Anthony Quinn, MP. The overseas evacuation programme was his idea. Churchill wasn’t keen, apparently. Thinks it will send the wrong message to the enemy.’ Kitty took a