the post every day from now on.
The summer passed swiftly, but no letter came from Hugh. Stella wavered in her resolve not to contact him first. What harm would there be in sending him a note via his company to say that Andrew had told her about their chance meeting in Edinburgh? But she resisted. Some instinct told her to be patient.
The Lomaxes were cheered by a letter to Tom from Andrew saying that he was in good fettle and back with his regiment on defensive duties. He was sad to report, though, that his good friend Noel Langley had been taken prisoner in France.
August came and Tom kept Stella informed of the increasingly grim daily bulletins about the war at home with air raids, mass casualties and destruction.
The talk on the hotel veranda was more about the situation in East and North Africa where the Italians had captured British Somaliland and were now bombing Egypt and the Suez Canal. Airmail had once again been stopped and troops were being mobilised in India.
‘This is where the Indian Army will come in,’ said a police officer on leave from Lahore. ‘We’ve run down our fighting force since the Great War but now we’ll be needed.’
Stella turned twenty-eight. She dwelled on the thought that life was passing her by. What had she done with her life since returning from Scotland? She had been content to carry on helping run the two hotels with no real ambition to do anything else. She was nearly the same age as Yvonne, yet her sister-in-law had shown far more initiative. Not only was she making herself indispensable at the Raj, she was a wife and mother.
It made Stella realise how much she wanted to be a mother herself. But there was no point hankering after something she couldn’t have; that joy would only come once she was married. She wondered if Monty wanted to be a father. They had written very spasmodically to each other while he was away training at Roorkee. She suspected that he wasn’t any more enthusiastic about marrying her than she was at being his wife.
Stella decided that, now she knew that Hugh was still in India, she would break off her courtship with Monty once and for all. Even if nothing came of it with Hugh, she wouldn’t hold Monty back from finding someone he really loved and could love him back in the way he deserved. She knew that her feelings for Hugh were still strong and she wouldn’t settle for a husband whom she didn’t love wholeheartedly.
In this new determined frame of mind, she also decided she would take her future in hand and do something for the war effort. She would volunteer in Rawalpindi for the Women’s Auxiliary Corps of India.
Stella told the Lomaxes of her reasons why she wished to return to Rawalpindi more promptly than in previous years. ‘Apart from wanting to sign up for the WAC, I’m missing baby Charles,’ she admitted. ‘He’ll have changed so much in the past four months. I hope you don’t mind?’
‘Of course not,’ said Esmie. ‘The numbers are dropping off now and we’ll soon be shutting up the hotel.’
‘And it’s a fine thing you’re doing,’ said Tom, ‘offering to help out as a volunteer.’
Stella was touched by his encouragement.
‘You’ll let me know if you hear anything more from Andrew, won’t you?’ Stella asked. ‘Or from Tibby about how things are in Scotland.’
‘I promise we will,’ Tom replied.
‘And,’ Esmie added, ‘we’ll be down to see you all at Christmas time.’
Stella met up with the baroness in Srinagar and they travelled back to Rawalpindi together. She told Hester the latest news about Andrew and also confided about her hope that Hugh Keating would get in touch.
‘It seems ridiculous that I should still have such strong feelings for a man I haven’t seen for over seven years, but I do.’
Hester said, ‘True love takes no account of time or distance. You just have to listen to your heart. If I were you, I’d write to him.’
‘Really?’ Stella was doubtful.
‘Darling, life is so uncertain. None of us knows what will happen in this war with Germany and Italy. If I was young like you, I’d seize whatever happiness I could get. If he doesn’t reply, then he’s not worth it and you won’t be any worse off.’
As soon as Stella was back at the Raj, spurred on by Hester’s words, she wrote a brief but friendly letter to Hugh and sent it off