* * *
After his parents’ deaths, it had been Stefan’s plan to begin a new life in Switzerland with his adored Celia, and he offered up a silent prayer of thanks to whatever God was looking after him that he had thought to deposit the bulk of his fortune in a Swiss bank before the worst happened.
But he had no idea where Celia was now, and she might even think he was dead. As a businessman he had known a great many influential people, but he had become wary of everyone now, and there was no way of knowing whom he could trust.
When he left his prison in the chill of a February morning, he was dressed far more soberly than of old. He needed to merge into the outside world, and try to find out exactly where he was.
But he was also disorientated and temporarily destitute, and he knew he must contact someone who could help him. From newspapers and road signs, he realised he had been held in a remote area some distance west of Berlin.
Then he remembered his old boss, Herr Vogl, with whom Celia’s parents had done such good business in the years before the war. He prayed that the Vogls would still be sympathetic towards their old business friends.
Herr Vogl had been a fair and honest man, and Stefan hoped that he might advance his old employee some money so that he could make his way to Switzerland.
It hurt his pride to have to ask such a thing, but he would do anything for the chance of contacting Celia again. So, fighting off the panic attacks that had become all too frequent since his unexpected liberation, he gathered his thoughts and made his plans, and tried to feel slightly more human again.
* * *
The Vogls were preparing for supper when the doorbell rang, and Herr Vogl answered it with some annoyance. No one trusted late callers these days, although by now everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the Nazi regime was crushed. Then, perhaps, the world could return to normality again after all the suffering and madness of war.
‘Yes? Who is it?’ he said, opening the door a fraction.
‘A friend, Herr Vogl,’ Stefan said at once. ‘A one-time friend and business acquaintance. Stefan von Gruber.’
Vogl opened the door a little wider and stared at the shabby attire and the spare frame of the man he remembered as once having such a fine physique.
‘Mein Gott, man, what has happened to you? Come inside and warm yourself by the fire. Have you been ill?’
Stefan gave a bitter laugh as he was ushered into the drawing room. ‘Not ill, exactly. But deprived of my liberty all this time due to my convictions—’
Too late, he remembered that long ago the son of this house, the young and earnest Franz Vogl, had become one of Hitler’s Brown-shirts.
Stefan wished desperately that he could have taken his words back, but he had walked for miles to get here, and he was near to collapse with fatigue. He simply couldn’t think sensibly any longer. But he recognised that these strait-laced people might well view him as a traitor to the Fatherland… He swayed a little, and felt the older man grip his arm.
‘Sit down, von Gruber, and take a nip of brandy.’
He obeyed, because he had become used to taking orders. He had not been badly treated during internment, but all liberty and sense of self-respect had been taken away from him and his fellow prisoners. They ate when they were told, slept when they were told, took exercise when they were told.
Once he had recovered a little, he knew this man and his wife would want answers as to why he was here. He steadied himself enough to know he must go carefully.
In the formal German manner of politeness before explanation, he enquired about the Vogl family.
‘Our son is dead,’ Herr Vogl said abruptly. ‘He was killed doing his duty for the Fatherland. My wife and I feel it best to state these things at once, to save embarrassment.’
God, he was a cold fish, thought Stefan. Frau Vogl too sat as rigidly as if a son wasn’t part of a loving family, just a commodity to be mentioned in passing. But it was their nature, he thought, with a vague recollection of how Celia had amused him with anecdotes of the Vogls’ long-ago Christmas visit to Cornwall, and told him how stiff and starchy they had been in that free and easy household. Clearly, nothing had changed.
‘My sincere condolences on your loss,’ he said gravely.
Herr Vogl’s shoulders sagged for a brief moment. ‘We are all casualties of war in one way or another, my friend. The world has changed for the worse, and I fear that the old order is no more, and never will be again.’
His words gave Stefan a glimmer of an opening.
‘But once it’s all over, we will have to resume normal living again, or it will have been for nothing. Forgive me, sir, but even old enemies must strive to regain something of what’s past, wouldn’t you agree?’
He saw the flash of anger in Herr Vogl’s eyes, and for a moment he thought he had gone too far. Then he saw Frau Vogl put a restraining hand on her husband’s arm.
‘I suspect that you are thinking of the Pengelly girl, Herr von Gruber,’ she said quietly. ‘I believe you and she had an affection for one another at one time.’
‘For all time, Frau Vogl,’ Stefan said, ignoring all thought of caution now. ‘We loved each other deeply, and were to be married. I pray that someday it will still be possible.’
He took a long draught of the stinging brandy and felt his head spin. It had been a mistake to drink on an empty stomach, and so far he had been offered no food.
The condemned man drank a shot of brandy, he found himself thinking… and then he was shot.
‘Please forgive me for bothering you like this,’ he said, getting clumsily to his feet. ‘I shouldn’t have come here.’
‘Sit down, man. As a former colleague, you are welcome,’ Herr Vogl said harshly. ‘We were about to eat, and I’m sure my wife can stretch our meagre fare to three. The pantry is not so plentiful as it once was, but we survive. Then we will talk, and if it is your wish, we will be happy to offer you the hospitality of our home until you decide what you are going to do.’
‘You are very kind, and I accept gladly,’ Stefan said, his heart too full to say more at this unexpected gesture.
* * *
Now that France had been liberated, Wenna’s ENSA concert party was entertaining troops in Paris and other French cities. Everyone said the war would be over soon, and Celia knew how buoyant her sister was these days, eagerly waiting for the day when it all ended, and she and Harry Mack could be married.
Celia was happy for her, and she tried not to let her own sadness show in the regular letters she wrote to her sister. But at the start of the new year she had good news to tell her, since their cousin Seb was now seeing a girl from Roche, and was seriously courting at last. She was happy for both of them, but it did seem to emphasise her own lack of news, and she felt increasingly lonely.
She never lost faith that one day she and Stefan would be together again, and she ached for the day when he would take her in his arms and vow that nothing had changed between them, nor ever could.
But she was wise enough to know that it would never be quite the way it had been before. Not at first, anyway. So much had come between them, and however much they desired it and longed for it, there would be an inevitable awkwardness at being reunited.
In her darkest moments, she wondered if they would both have changed irrevocably. No one could ever know how deep the changes were until the moment of truth when they were together again. Celia shivered, torturing herself with doubts, but facing facts logically, the way she had always done.
* * *
Even as Celia was writing her letter to Wenna, a wedding was taking place in a small country church somewhere south of Paris.
The ceremony was conducted in French and English, and there was no formal attire among the chief participants or the wedding guests. There was a mixture of army and air force uniforms, and a large sprinkling of local people who had turned out to witness a far happier occasion than had been seen in their bullet-riddled town in recent year
s.
‘Do you, Harry Johnson Mack, take Wenna Pengelly to be your wedded wife? Will you love her and honour her, and keep you only unto her, so long as you both shall live?’
The man looked deeply into his bride’s vivid blue eyes.
‘I will,’ he said quietly.
The priest turned to the beautiful woman in the trim khaki uniform, mourning, as only a Frenchman could, that with such gloriously dramatic colouring she couldn’t be wearing virginal white. But the obvious love between the two was the only thing that mattered, and he cleared his throat once more.
‘Do you, Wenna Pengelly, take Harry Johnson Mack to be your wedded husband? Will you love, honour and obey him, and keep you only unto him, so long as you both shall live?’
‘I will,’ murmured Wenna, her voice catching at the solemn beauty of the moment as the priest motioned to Harry to slide the gold ring on to her wedding finger.
‘I now pronounce you man and wife,’ said the priest. He looked around at the congregation and spoke sternly. ‘Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder.’
‘Just let anyone try,’ Harry murmured so that only Wenna could hear, as he pulled her into his arms and pressed his mouth to hers in their first married kiss.
And then all solemnity was over, and their friends and supporters surrounded them, and kisses and tears flowed in equal measure, together with good luck flowers from the local well-wishers. They had little to give, but everyone loved a wedding, and this marriage of strangers in their midst seemed the best way of all to herald the start of the new year.
‘Have we done the right thing, do you think?’ Harry whispered mischievously in her ear when they were finally leading the procession down the street to the cafe in the square where they were to hold a small reception.
‘No. We’re totally mad,’ Wenna said, smiling, touched beyond words as local children threw flowers in their path.
‘What will your folks think when we tell them?’
She smiled again, sure of herself, and sure of his love.
‘They’ll love it. How could my mother do otherwise, when she and my father did the very same thing?’
She wasn’t sure about Nick – though she knew her mother could always placate him – but from the moment Harry had told her he couldn’t bear to wait until the war was over to make her his wife, she had known they would do this.
There had been an undoubted sense of charm and continuity in her mind, knowing that her mother had married her father in the very same way during the First World War – secretly, telling no one but their wartime colleagues, and for no other reason but the need to be together.
Skye and Philip hadn’t even told their closest family their secret for some time, but Wenna and Harry intended writing home with their news at once.
But first there was the small reception of food and drink, generously hoarded and donated by their colleagues, and catered by the romantic French cafe owners. There was much laughter and teasing innuendo before it was over, and they winced at the clanking sound of the old tin cans that were tied to the back of the small car they had borrowed.
But finally, as twilight merged into the soft darkness of evening, they were alone to enjoy their brief weekend leave at a small hotel in the country. It wasn’t the honeymoon of the rich and famous, but for two people so very much in love, it was more idyllic than anything that money could buy.
‘Do you know how often I’ve dreamed of this moment?’ Harry murmured, as he slid the silky straps of her slip from her shoulders, and bent his head to kiss the soft smooth skin of each one.
‘Tell me,’ she said huskily, her senses tingling anew with every touch of his hands and mouth. She was happy to prolong the moment, knowing that this sweet banter was no more than a prelude to the pleasure they would take in one another, on this night and for the rest of their lives.
‘Every day since the day I met you,’ he said, his lips moving downwards to kiss the wild pulsing at her throat. ‘And every night since then, I’ve ached to hold you in my arms and make you mine, and to know that no one else could have you.’
‘No one else ever could – or ever will.’
She felt his hands moving over her slender shape, finding the curves and hollows through the slip. With a growing fire in her body that matched his own, she longed for him to know every part of her, properly and without restriction or inhibition.
‘Harry, I want—’ she began tremulously, hesitating for no more than an instant. ‘I don’t think I can bear to wait a moment longer.’
‘Nor I, my sweet darling,’ he said, pushing the silky garment down the length of her body until it fell in a shimmering heap on the carpet. ‘And I thank God I don’t have to apologise for my hunger for you.’
With one movement he swept her up in his arms and lay her on the bed. Moments later he had filled her with himself, and she gloried in the erotic fever of his lovemaking. If there was one coherent thought left in her mind as they soared towards an exquisite completeness, it was to thank God that they had found one another, out of all the world.
* * *
Normal communication between Europe and Britain was slowly being restored, and the letter that arrived at New World a few weeks later had an unmistakably French stamp on it.
“I’ve truly been meaning to write to you sooner than this, Mom,” Wenna had written. “But after my recent leave we were immediately sent to give a series of concerts to the British and Allied troops in Normandy, and you wouldn’t believe how hectic and disorganised everything is there. Still, the reception we got was simply wonderful. Life will never be the same for me after all this adulation.”
Skye smiled indulgently, knowing how unbelievably modest her girl still was, despite the lovely voice that must have cheered thousands of servicemen by now. As many as the much-fêted Vera Lynn, Skye thought loyally… She read on, and sat bolt upright.
As a matter of fact, nothing will ever be the same for me again after my last leave, Mom. It was no more than a weekend, but it was the most blissful weekend of my life, because I spent it with Harry in the sweetest little hotel in the country. And before you’re completely shocked, I have something very special to tell you.
Harry and I were married on our last leave. We simply couldn’t wait any longer, and I pray that you’ll understand, because it was the same for you and Daddy, wasn’t it? I know you’ll feel a bit cheated out of giving me a big wedding but it wasn’t what we wanted, or needed. All we needed was each other, so please be happy for us.
Skye was reading the words for the umpteenth time when Nick came home and found her there, sitting motionless, her mind a million miles away.
Remembering a time when she too had wanted nothing but to be in her beloved’s arms, desperate to know the feeling of belonging while everyone around them threatened to blast all the world into oblivion. A threat that was even greater so in this war.
She and Philip had been so in love, exactly as Wenna and Harry were in love…
‘What’s wrong?’ Nick said, alarmed at her silence. ‘It’s not bad news, is it, darling?’
She smiled at him, the second great love of her life. In many ways the best love of all, because he was her last and most enduring love. She stretched out her hand and he came to sit beside her. She leaned against him.
‘No, it’s not bad news. For once, it’s happy news,’ she said. ‘But I think you had better read it for yourself while I pour us both a celebratory glass of sherry.’
‘Good Lord, it must be good news for you to take a drink in the middle of the afternoon,’ he said with a grin, but she could see the relief in his face. There had been enough bad news to contend with over the years, and it was time they all turned the corner.
The next moment her euphoric mood shattered and her hand shook over the sherry decanter as he uttered a savage oath.
‘The unspeakable bastard! This was presumably a shotgun wedding—’ he said explosively.
‘Nick, how could you think such
a thing! I thought you had more trust in our daughter.’
‘I trust her all right, but not this conniving bastard. What kind of a hole-and-corner wedding could it have been, anyway, doing it on the quiet and telling nobody until it was all over?’
‘My kind,’ Skye said, her voice stiff with anger. ‘The very same kind that Philip and I had in wartime. But I suppose no one could expect a lawyer to understand the needs of two people very much in love and far from home, who couldn’t bear to be apart one moment longer, and were always aware that every day might be their last.’
The silence in the room was electric. Then Nick had covered the distance between them and was holding her unyielding body tightly in his arms.
‘My God, Skye, forgive me. I didn’t think—’
‘You never do. You can be as objective as ice when it comes to your clients, but not where your family is concerned. Don’t you find that strange?’
Her voice still shook with rage and she couldn’t relax in his arms. He had spoiled the most beautiful moment of these dark days, and she couldn’t forgive him for that.
‘Don’t you know why?’ he said in a strangled voice at last. ‘Don’t you know it’s because I love you all so much, and it tears me apart to know what’s happening to all of us? I can’t bear to see how Celia still lives in hope for her German fellow – and not knowing if Olly’s dead or alive – and now losing Wenna in this way—’
‘You idiot,’ Skye said, all her stiffness melting away in an instant. ‘We haven’t lost her. She’ll always be ours, and she’ll want us to be happy for her now. If she’s half as happy as we’ve been, she’ll do all right – wouldn’t you say?’
A Brighter Tomorrow Page 29