Kissing Kin Read Online Free Page A

tonic.
    Aeroplanes were doing more bombing than Zeppelins now, over England, and several were heard in London the first night Camilla was there, though nothing was dropped on the city and all the damage proved to be in Essex. She was sitting with Virginia in the little upstairs parlour where visitors to the St. James’s Square house were received by the family, when the first low hum became noticeable.
    “ What’s that? ” said Camilla, and felt her heartbeats quicken.
    “Oh, you’ll get used to that,” said Virginia without moving. “It’s the Jerries again. Usually nothing much happens.”
    “Can we see them?” Camilla demanded above the sound of the guns which had wakened to duty belatedly in the Park. “Somebody must see them because we’re firing back to them, aren’t we?”
    “You can look if you like,” said Virginia, who was very tired. “But it’s an awful fag to open the windows on account of the black-out curtains and turning off the lights, and so on.” She reached for a cigarette from a silver box on the table, lighted it, pulled a chair round to face her own and put her feet up in its seat. “I wish I could remember a time when my feet didn’t hurt right up to the knee,” she added plaintively.
    Camilla sat still and looked at her while cigarette smokecurled out across the room and the ground defence in the Park carried on.
    “How long have you been doing that?” she asked curiously.
    “Smoking? I forget. Quite a while. Archie doesn’t mind, and it seems to help, I don’t know why.”
    “Could I have one?”
    Virginia nodded and pushed the silver box a few inches along the table.
    “You will sooner or later. I’ve no objection.” She yawned, covered up too late, and slid down in the chair. “I’m sorry to be so dull, my dear, but I’ve had a really grisly day. Three of our kitchen people have gone sick—some sort of bad tummy—and I had to help out there. You’ll be a godsend, I’ll never forget how we worked poor Phoebe when she turned VAD, though it was nothing to what she got later on in Belgium.”
    Camilla noticed that the hand which struck her match—her own hand—was not quite steady, and her knees felt queer. She envied Virginia’s cast-iron composure with all that noise going on outside and that strangely naked feeling overhead, and thought, Give me three years and I can do it too. Casting about for something to pin her mind to, the way you fight off the first qualms of seasickness, she said, “Is Cousin Sally still at your house in the country?”
    “Mm-hm. Indefinitely.”
    “Virginia, will you please tell me about Cousin Sally, she’s a total mystery at home. What exactly did she do? ”
    “Some other time, darling,” pleaded Virginia. “I really haven’t the strength to-night to begin on Cousin Sally, it’s much too complicated. We’ll have a cup of weak tea, shall we, and some biscuits, and by then the raid will have drawn off and we can go to bed.” She passed a fretful hand across her aching eyes and forehead, swept off the white nursing coif she wore and dropped it on the table.
    “Virginia, you’ve got your hair cut short!” cried Camilla. “I thought you had, but I didn’t—how sweet you look, doesn’t Archie mind?”
    Virginia ran her fingers through the short dark curls at the back of her neck.
    “It’s less trouble this way. And Archie says it looks much nicer than long hair when I wake up in the morning,” she said complacently.

    The blue VAD dress and white cap and apron made Camilla look very young and earnest. She found the work sheer sickening drudgery, and had often to grit her teeth against the surge of nausea which was partly stretched nerves. Bed-pans and bloodstained linen and greasy dishwater and dreadful smells—and then the hum of German aircraft overhead and the necessity not to show the slightest concern lest one be thought a coward. It was hardly fair, because the others had plenty of time to get used to it. But