by Jenny Holmes
The order had been carried out and Una pushed aside. The tearing sensation of loss she felt as Angelo’s hand slid from her grasp would stay with her for a long time.
But, as Joyce and Brenda told her repeatedly, there was nothing else she could have done. Angelo needed to be in hospital. The soldiers had to carry him down the fell into the waiting vehicle. She must accompany him to the door of the army ambulance then let him go.
‘Where will you take him?’ Joyce asked the doctor after he’d finished talking to Hilda and she had made a careful note of everything that had happened.
‘To Clifton House. It’s an isolation hospital just south of Leeds. I’ve given the warden the address.’
‘What can you do, Doc? Is there any way you can help him?’
Brenda’s no-nonsense question was met by a sharp glance and an answer that was to the point. ‘We can bring down his temperature for a start. Then, if he accepts food, we can gradually build his strength back up.’
‘But?’
‘Can he be cured?’ The doctor shook his head. ‘Not unless you believe in miracles.’
Una stayed with Angelo, even as Atkinson began to close the ambulance door. Then he had a change of heart. ‘I’ll give you another minute then you’ll have to step aside,’ he told her gently.
She leaned over to whisper in Angelo’s ear. ‘You must do as the doctor tells you. I’ll visit you as soon as I can.’
Her voice broke through the muddle of disconnected sounds and swaying, jerking movements. Angelo locked his gaze on to hers one last time.
‘You hear me?’ she repeated. ‘I’ll visit you and we’ll make plans for when you’re better, for when the war is over.’
He gave a deep, uneven sigh.
‘Italy. Pisa. Sunshine. That’ll be us, my dearest.’
‘Hurry up now,’ Atkinson muttered as the doctor said goodbye to Joyce and Brenda.
‘Ciao, Angelo. Ti amo, ti amo!’
‘I love you,’ he whispered back as the doors finally closed.
What a day! Brenda gazed at her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her teeth. It was only now that she had time to recall her encounter with Donald in the shadow of Kelsey Crag and wonder again about the effect he had on her. There was no one like him for pure, strutting arrogance. Perhaps it came out of him being so strikingly good-looking; women must fall at his feet as a matter of course and, with a combination of looks and wealth, he was able to lord it over men too. But he’s a big fish in a small pond, she told herself. It would be different in a town or a city. He’d soon come up against cleverer, more sophisticated types who wouldn’t hesitate to put Donald White in his place. She spat into the basin then rinsed out her mouth, taking her time to replace her toothbrush in her washbag as she heard Doreen give an impatient rap on the door and order her to get a move on.
‘What’s the hurry?’ she asked when she stepped out on to the landing. ‘Do you want to get to bed? Are you short on beauty sleep?’
‘Miaow!’ Doreen came straight back at her.
She’d swept into the bathroom and Brenda was halfway along the landing when a light bulb went on inside her head and she stopped dead. ‘Of course!’
‘Talking to yourself now, eh?’ Elsie’s door stood open and she called out to Brenda.
‘I just realized something.’ Glued to the spot, Brenda began to work it all out. Donald hadn’t been on a joyride that afternoon, any more than she and Una had been. He’d driven out to Kelsey specifically to meet someone: the driver of the black Morris. ‘Howard Moyes, no less.’ She backtracked to the bathroom and knocked on the door. ‘Doreen, I want to ask you something.’
‘Not now. I’m having a wash,’ came the short-tempered reply.
‘It’s important.’
Brenda heard Doreen pull the plug and listened to the water gurgle away. When she opened the door with a towel in her hand, the skin on her face was shiny and scrubbed.
‘Always rinse in cold water,’ she advised. ‘It tones everything up nicely.’
‘Doreen, listen. This is about Donald.’
‘Not that again.’ She was about to close the door when Brenda put her foot in the way. ‘I’ve told you: Donald does what he wants when he wants. I’m not his keeper.’
‘It’s not you and him I’m interested in. This is something different. I’m convinced I saw him earlier today, having a secret powwow with Howard Moyes and Clive Nixon.’
Frown lines appeared on Doreen’s forehead. ‘So? There’s no law against it, so far as I’m aware.’
‘But is Donald friends with those two men? I need to know.’
Doreen let go of the door and allowed Brenda to step inside the cold bathroom, where a row of towels hung on hooks next to an old Victorian sink with cast-iron brackets and dripping brass taps. ‘Why’s that, Brenda? Why are you always so interested in your fiancé’s brother?’
‘Forget about that for a second. I’m not trying to get one up on you, all right?’
‘That makes a change,’ Doreen said sulkily. ‘Anyway, if you must know, I have no idea who Donald’s friends are because he never introduces me to any.’
Still intent on working things out, Brenda sat down on the edge of the bath. ‘So help me, please. Do you remember any of the evenings when he promised to meet you and then backed out at the last minute? Or when you were with him and he would vanish without warning?’
‘Of course I do. I don’t need reminding, ta.’
‘And were Moyes and Nixon sniffing around Burnside at the time?’
Doreen shook her head in genuine puzzlement. ‘I have no idea. Why?’
‘Because I want to work out how far back those three might go. And, if they do know each other, how and where did they first come across each other? What do they have in common that would make them want to meet in secret at a place where the chance of anyone seeing them was slim?’
‘Like I said, don’t ask me.’ It was once bitten, twice or thrice shy as far as Doreen was concerned. She’d got far too close to Alfie and almost paid a heavy price. Every day she woke up and went about her business in dread of a second unwelcome visit from the two men that Brenda was asking about. ‘I don’t want any more to do with them – or with Alfie Craven, for that matter.’
‘No one does,’ Brenda interrupted. ‘Not after what he did to Bill.’
‘Exactly.’ Doreen had made her point and had no more to say. ‘Now go away and leave me alone.’
Within twenty-four hours, every join in the dark brown lino and every finger mark on the pale green walls of the ward where Bill lay had become familiar to Grace. She knew the exact times when the nurses came in to take his temperature and renew his dressings, the hours when they changed their shifts and when the beds were made, what was for breakfast and the name of the orderly who wheeled in the trolley. She’d resisted every attempt by the nurses to make her break her vigil.
‘I’d rather stay here,’ she insisted quietly when Edith tried to take her place. It was midnight; exactly twenty-six hours since the ambulance had brought Bill to the hospital and there was still no sign of him waking up. ‘You go home and get some rest. There’s no point two of us sitting up all night.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’
‘I am. Take a taxi if you’d rather not drive. I’ll telephone you if there’s any change.’
‘Very well.’ It was Grace’s right to choose and Edith conceded gracefully. Oh, my son! She sighed to herself as she trod the silent corridors and left by the main door. My son!
Grace gazed at Bill’s face. His eyes were still closed, his mouth slightly open, chin shadowed with dark stubble. But hope was there somewhere. Not in the paraphernalia of tubes, charts and dials surrounding his bed, not in the discreet, brief chats between doctors and nurses, nor in the pale, motionless features of the man she loved. Hope and faith came from somewhere else, from deep within her. It rested in her heart’s core if only she could find it.
I believe you’ll get
better, I do! I know how strong you are and how brave. You’ll come back to me and we’ll carry on living and working together, being husband and wife.
She remembered the church bells that had rung out for their wedding, how nervous she’d been as Brenda and Una had helped her to get ready and Joyce had handed her the bouquet. She remembered Bill waiting for her at the end of the aisle, turning to her and smiling.
‘We have so much to live for.’ Her lips touched his cheek as she murmured the words. ‘Come back to me, Bill. I need you.’
St Michael’s Church was unusually full for morning service on the second Sunday in July. Even intermittent worshippers like Maurice, Horace and Joe had made the effort to attend on an unseasonably cool morning with rain clouds threatening.
‘This will please the vicar,’ Maurice commented as he filed in through the porch then took a hymn book from Bob. ‘Church is bursting at the seams.’
The brothers were aware that it had nothing to do with a sudden attack of Christian piety among the Burnside parishioners. ‘No one wants to miss vital information, that’s why,’ Bob said with a wink.
Maurice nodded then shuffled into the back pew as organ notes filled the crowded interior. He sat between Cliff and Hilda, who had visited Edith at home before church to ask about Bill.
‘Cheer up,’ Joe growled at Roland, who sat down next to him in a pew near the front. ‘It might never happen.’
‘It already has.’ Roland had given up expecting Neville to return home and had come to the service in an attempt to distract himself. ‘My lad’s scarpered, I’ve got no idea where.’
‘Or why?’ Joe’s memory was jolted back to the time when his son Frank had disappeared, never to return. For once he felt a grain of sympathy for his neighbour’s plight.
Roland shrugged. ‘He’s sixteen and old enough to look after himself. It’s up to him if he decides to take off for the weekend without telling me. I’m only his dad, when all’s said and done.’
As Esther turned to a fresh sheet in her dog-eared collection of scores and began an almost identical slow, solemn tune, the Land Girls arrived. Bob handed Brenda and Kathleen a hymn book each and pointed to a couple of spaces close to the front. He asked a quick question about Bill and they told him that so far as they knew there was no fresh news.
‘What about Alfie?’ Brenda wanted to know. ‘Any sign of him?’
‘Nothing.’ Bob kept on methodically handing out books.
‘They did pick up one of the POWs, though,’ Jean was quick to inform him. ‘Una’s chap, no less. He was at death’s door so they carted him off to the isolation hospital double quick.’
Whispered word filtered from one pew to the next: still no Alfie, but one more POW had been recaptured. No good news about Bill, apparently. But did you know that Edgar Kershaw had applied for twenty-four hours’ leave and was on his way back to Burnside right this minute? Standing between Doreen and Elsie, Joyce tried not to react to this particular rumour. Edgar had told her on the phone that he would do his very best; since then, she’d heard nothing.
The organ notes wheezed to a halt as, in the small, damp vestry, the vicar pulled on his white surplice then adjusted it before entering the church. All heads turned towards the altar as nine choristers of various ages and sizes filed into the choir stalls.
On the way to church in the van with Joyce and Doreen, Poppy had made a daring plan. The idea had come to her as she got dressed but she hadn’t finally decided to go ahead with it until Joyce had parked in the pub yard and Poppy had noticed Roland entering the church alone.
I’ll skip the service but not tell anyone, she thought as the others stepped out of the vehicle, straightened their dresses then went ahead. It’ll take some nerve but I’ll do it anyway.
‘Are you coming, Pops?’ Doreen called over her shoulder.
‘I’ll just be a minute.’ She pointed towards the pub toilets.
It was a good enough excuse and she was soon alone in the yard. Now came the bit that took courage. She’d banked on finding Grace’s bike in the place where it was always left, leaning against the outhouse beside the smithy. Good, it was where it should be. Poppy told herself she was only borrowing it and would be back before the service ended, once she’d cycled out to Brigg Farm and discovered once and for all whether or not Neville was lying low. If I do winkle him out, I’ll have one last try to talk some sense into him. And if he’s still too scared to go to the police station, I’ll come back here, wait outside the church and tell his dad exactly what’s been going on. I’ll hand it all over to Mr Thomson. He’ll know what to do for the best.
Poppy hadn’t read many books as a child, but as she set off on Grace’s bike, she felt she could be a character in a modern adventure story: the young heroine who breaks the rules and rescues her younger brother from the baddies. Of course, she knew that in real life a happy ending wasn’t guaranteed; she only had to bear in mind what had happened to Bill to realize that. Still, Neville had taken a shine to her from the beginning so she felt duty-bound to try to help him, undeterred by spots of rain on her face and bare arms and the fact that the wind was against her as she cycled up the hill to Brigg Farm.
She arrived out of breath, with her thin cotton dress thoroughly soaked. I’m here now so I’ll see it through, she decided as she entered the farmyard, to be greeted by the usual sight of Major craning his neck over the stable door and the sound of Roland’s pigs grunting and jostling inside their sty. Rain had already formed muddy puddles and was overflowing the gutters, while dejected pigeons stared down at her from the newly installed telephone wire overhead.
I’ll try the house first, she decided, taking care to avoid a nasty nip from the shire horse’s teeth as she parked Grace’s bike under the stone steps to the hayloft. She backtracked across the yard, opened the garden gate and hurried up the front path then gave a loud knock on the farmhouse door without expecting any answer. When she tried to turn the knob, she found that the door was locked. ‘Neville!’ Cupping her hands around her mouth, she yelled up at the bedroom windows.
Again, no reply.
‘Neville, it’s me, Poppy!’ I look a sight! What am I doing? How did I ever think that I’d get anywhere by doing this? Exasperated, she turned and walked back down the path.
‘Neville!’ she cried at the top of her voice from the gate, turning in all directions to call his name.
Her voice drifted down into the valley as the rain set in. There would be no let-up for a while.
For heaven’s sake, this is a waste of time! Angry with herself, she stormed into the yard, intending to retrieve the bike and cycle back to the village. Then again, perhaps she ought to take shelter and wait five minutes for the rain to ease. Yes, that’s what she would do. She chose the only dry place she could think of: the loft above the stable.
She mounted the stone steps, sighing as she went in out of the rain, and sank against the slippery stack of hay that she and Joyce had carted up from Low Field the previous day. There wasn’t much room, but at least it was dry and so she began to shift some of the hay further to one side to create more space. She paused to shake moisture out of her hair then took a handy pitchfork and got back to work.
The low rustle of hay and its sweet smell eased Poppy’s frustration and she carried on for a minute or two, tidying and building up the heap until a good third of the rough wooden floor was visible. It was only then that she paused to put down her pitchfork and take a closer look at a dark, damp patch that she’d exposed. She bent down to touch it. The stain was sticky and when she examined her fingertips she saw that they were dark red.
She recoiled into a corner, staring at her fingers. This was blood. She looked again at the congealed stain, steeling herself before creeping forward to lift more of the hay. The irregular patch extended a long way towards the back wall. Without realizing that she was holding her breath, she cleared a larger area, until at last she touched something solid and with a loud exhalation went down on to her knee
s. With mounting horror she brushed aside the last of the hay to reveal Neville’s face.
He lay on his back with his eyes closed. Blood had poured from a deep wound on his right temple, soaking his hair. More blood had trickled from the corner of his mouth on to the floor, where it had formed a dark pool. She touched his cold cheek then brushed aside more hay to discover that Neville’s final act had been to clutch at his assailant’s shirt and tear away part of the collar. He’d held on to it in his death throes. The hand holding the starched fabric was flung wide of his body, the other rested across his chest. His long legs were spreadeagled. One boot was missing.
Poppy would never rid herself of the overwhelming feeling of absence inside the hayloft. All that was left of Neville once the spirit had departed was bloodied flesh and solid bone. Long ginger lashes curved over waxen cheeks, the mouth was slack. There was no breath, not the slightest movement. The person she knew was gone.
Rainwater splashed from the gutter on to the stone steps. Poppy rocked back on her heels and sobbed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Twenty-four hours was all the leave that Edgar had been able to squeeze out of his commanding officer.
‘You’re making a habit of it,’ Acaster had complained on the Saturday evening, looking up sharply from his desk and staring at Edgar over the top of his half-moon glasses. ‘But since it concerns a serious assault on your brother-in-law, I’m willing to grant the request.’
The form was duly filled out and signed. Edgar had driven out of the base shortly after dawn next day. He’d gone straight to the hospital and joined Grace at Bill’s bedside. After her initial exclamation of surprise, he’d held her hand and she’d shared what little information she had from the doctors. Bill was holding his own. His heart was strong but they weren’t sure if he’d lost too much blood to make a full recovery.
‘I can’t agree,’ she’d told Edgar firmly. ‘They don’t know Bill the way I do.’
‘That’s right.’ Edgar hadn’t picked up any hopeful signs on the charts and monitors but he’d known that his role was to shore up his sister. ‘He’ll fight every inch of the way.’