That evening I phoned Jacob to tell him the news and to ask him if he would give me away. ‘I know it’s not your religion, Jacob, but you are as close as a father to me and I would love it if you could.’
‘Ach,’ he said and I heard the smile in his voice. ‘Sometimes these differences in religion do not matter. Yes, dearest Seffy, I would be honoured to be your father for the occasion. And my Kitty will be so pleased. You are marrying a good man. A man I respect.’
The night before the wedding Charlie and I sat out on the veranda, wrapped in blankets, for it had turned much colder. He was going to stay that night at Dr Jago’s house, for convention’s sake, but we’d had supper at home and were now watching the lighthouse send its beam across the sea. All the preparations had been made and Jacob and Kitty established in their rooms. We had another visitor. Christopher, Charlie’s younger stepson. The older boy had been killed on the beaches at Anzio, a fact that Charlie bore stoically although I know it distressed him. But Christopher had come to join in the celebrations and I liked him straight away. He was a nice boy, in his last year at school, and eager to join up.
‘Go to university, first,’ Charlie had begged, when the subject was discussed over supper. ‘For God’s sake, get an education. The war’s nearly over and we’ll need bright people after it because there’ll be so much to do.’
Christopher had grinned but said nothing. He was a young man who would go his own way.
‘I like your boy,’ I said to Charlie, as we sat and nursed glasses of brandy. ‘You should have brought him here before. And Kitty is quite awestruck.’
Charlie laughed. ‘Jacob would have something to say about that.’ He looked out to sea and then took a gulp from his glass. ‘Seff, there’s something I have to tell you. I must say it now, and then if you want to call off the wedding you can.’
I gaped at him. ‘What?’ I asked, shocked. ‘What on earth could be so bad?’
‘It’s about Amyas.’
I think my heart stopped beating. I’d tried not to think about Amyas for so long now that to hear his name mentioned was almost like hearing a forbidden word. Amyas, about whom part of me still dreamed. ‘What about him?’ My voice was no more than a choked whisper.
‘I told you he was a traitor, or rather, I let you believe he was a traitor. That isn’t true. He works for us. Has done all along.’
I looked away from him, to the dark sea. There was no moon tonight, not even the faintest glimmer, so beyond the regular beam from the lighthouse and the dim swinging light on the veranda, all was blackness. I could hear the surf crashing through the rocks on the edges of the bay and from behind me, the faint sound of conversation, as Alice and Jacob caught up with all the news.
‘Say something . . . please.’ Charlie’s voice was hollow.
‘Amyas told von Klausen about me taking a letter to Sarah. I know he did. Xanthe heard him.’
‘Yes, he did,’ Charlie confirmed. ‘But von Klausen knew it anyway. He knew you’d been there, you were followed all the way, and informed on by someone at the girls’ school in Berlin.’
‘They wouldn’t,’ I gasped. ‘They were all in danger.’
‘Precisely. And that’s why they would turn informer; to save a child, a parent, a husband, who knows? It’s a sad fact, but it does happen.’
‘But Amyas did tell him.’
‘He dripped out information, useless stuff, generally, just enough to keep his cover intact. He knew that you were being watched, because he was their main watcher. And when von Klausen wanted to arrest you . . .’
‘What?’ I was shocked again.
‘Oh yes, that was the plan, but Amyas stopped them. He said you were useful and would lead them to others.’
I sat back in the chair and thought about Amyas telling me the story of his childhood. ‘He told me he was blackmailed by the British government into being an agent.’
‘Did he?’ Charlie shrugged. ‘That was before my time, but I wouldn’t be surprised. He was a thief and utterly amoral.’
I knew that, I thought, but I didn’t care. Not when with one look he could compel me to follow him to the ends of the earth. Or could he? Hadn’t I lost that feeling? Decided that I had grown beyond him and resolved to put him out of my mind when Charlie said that he was a traitor. I turned my head to look at my soon-to-be husband.
‘Did you know that he was a double agent when I told you what Xanthe said?’
Charlie reached out his hand and took mine. ‘I suspected it, but . . . I wasn’t entirely sure and there was another thing.’
‘What? What other thing?’
‘Oh God, Seffy, you know what.’ He sat up and glared at me. ‘I was jealous, for Christ’s sake. I’ve adored you for years, loved you . . . ever since we first met, but you didn’t love me and I tried to live with it. In a way I’d accepted it, because how could I have competed with Amyas Troy? Look at me, I’m an ordinary bloke, interesting perhaps and with an interesting job, but compared to him in looks and fascination, nothing . . . but then there was a chance, and I took it.’ He groaned. ‘And now, this,’ he looked down at his pinned-up sleeve. ‘I’m in second place and always will be.’
My mind went back to that hotel in Portugal. How he’d paused before telling me that he’d always suspected Amyas and convinced me that he, Charlie, was the person I should be with. He’d lied to me and I should hate him. But I didn’t.
I snatched my hand out of his and even as his face fell, I put both my hands on his shoulders. ‘You listen to me, Charlie Bradford. As far as I’m concerned, you’re in first place with me and always will be. I love you, with or without that bloody arm.’ And I bent and kissed his mouth with as much conviction as I could muster.
‘And Amyas?’ he muttered.
I thought for a few seconds before replying. ‘Amyas is in the past . . . or no, not in the past, really. It’s as though he doesn’t actually exist, except in dreams. He’s a fantasy, a fairy tale. And like a child who grows out of fairy tales, I’ve grown out of Amyas.’
‘Oh, thank God,’ Charlie sighed, and kissed me again. He didn’t ask me if I still had those dreams.
And so, the next day, we married at the church on the headland, in front of our two children and our close friends. The sun came out and sparkled on the sea and gleamed red and gold on the autumn leaves. People from the village clapped us as we walked back to the house and I threw the place open for them to have a celebratory drink with us. Geoff, who had come down from London, gave me a kiss on the cheek. ‘I’ve been dying to do that for years,’ he said. ‘I always thought you were the most charming girl ever to work at the paper. And a bloody good writer too. The job’s open, whenever you want to come back.’
I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but no. I’ve got a job, bringing up these children and being a wife.’
‘Oh, well,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll just have to settle for Charlie, I suppose.’
Charlie, glass in hand, came to join us. ‘What’s this?’ He grinned. ‘You expecting me back at my desk?’
‘Of course,’ said Geoff.
‘’Fraid not, chum. Not yet anyway. I’m in the army. I might be a bit damaged, but I’ve still got a brain and they want me to carry on.’
I squeezed his arm. He was going back to London in a week and although we’d miss each other, I knew that he’d be safe, or at least safer, given that we were still at war. No more missions to occupied countries.
We went to a hotel on Dartmoor for a couple of days’ honeymoon, but after one night away, we came home. ‘Your house has spoilt me for other places,’ he said.
‘Me too,’ I laughed, then gave him a fierce look. ‘And it’s our house.’ I paused, then said, ‘Maybe, when the war is over, we’ll go abroad again.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Perhaps to that place in northern Spain, um . . . can’t remember its name.’
‘Idiot,’ I grinned. ‘Cadaqués. Why is it that I keep having to remind you? All right, that’s where we’ll go.’
But it wasn’t the first place we went to when the war ended. We went to Germany, with Jacob and Kitty to look for her mother. Of course, we didn’t find her, she had gone, murdered, along with her pupils in an extermination camp.
‘I can’t bear this place,’ I whispered to Charlie, while we stood, waiting for Kitty and Jacob in the bleak office where the lists of the victims were being compiled.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s hellish.’
We were learning every day of the numbers who’d been killed, and every day seemed like another nightmare. But Kitty had grown up and was made of stronger stuff than me.
‘I’m going to stay on here in Germany for a while,’ she said, when we returned to the hotel. ‘They need people in the displaced persons camp. I have languages, and I can help. If I can’t find my mother, I might find someone else’s.’ She looked at us, defiantly. ‘I’m going to try, anyway.’
‘You’re a good girl,’ said Jacob, wiping his eyes. ‘And I think you do the right thing. But I will miss you.’
We came home to a quieter life. Charlie left the army and went back to the newspaper, but spent half of his time with us. He travelled abroad sometimes, managing well and continuing to write carefully researched and insightful articles.
My novels continued to sell – as my editor said, people needed to be taken out of themselves – and life continued without disturbance, until one day when Mrs Penney knocked on the study door. I was busy, checking through my latest chapter.
‘Yes?’ I said, not looking up.
‘There’s a gentleman to see you, Miss Seffy.’
‘Is there?’ I asked. ‘Who is it?’
‘A Mr Beaumont.’
‘Do we know him?’
Mrs Penney shook her head. ‘No, Miss Seffy, but there’s something, I don’t know . . . something about him that I almost recognise. Perhaps I saw him, a long time ago.’
I gazed at her and suddenly felt dizzy. Could it be? ‘Show him in,’ I said, with a dry mouth, and stood up.
It wasn’t him. The man who came into my room was my age, thin and slight with a balding head and a livid scar across his face, which dragged his eye down so that he was almost unrecognisable. But I knew him.
‘Percy?’ I asked, walking towards him with my hand outstretched.
He gave a crooked smile. ‘Yes, Seffy. How very nice of you to know me.’
‘I remember everything about that summer,’ I said. ‘It will live with me always.’
‘I thought it might,’ he nodded. ‘And that’s why I’ve come. Amyas needs you.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Provence, July 1947
I LOOKED THROUGH the car window at the fields of lavender and sunflowers which spread in a glorious patchwork across the landscape. Earlier we had driven past acres of vineyards, their regimented rows in full leaf, and I watched men and women stroll between the lines, tying the vines in place and hoeing out the weeds. Closer to the city of Avignon, orchards of peach and apricot, their blossom finished now, flourished in the balmy weather. It was exquisite countryside, rich with all the beauty and promise of bounties to come.
I rolled down the window, allowing the sweet-smelling air into the car, and closed my eyes to let the perfume bathe and calm me. The nerves which had tingled for days now were jangling at full pelt and I wondered, yet again, if it was wrong of me to travel here. I should be at home, in Cornwall, with my husband and my children, in a place that could rival Provence for its scenery.
Oh, certainly Cornwall was beautiful, but that beauty mainly came from the sea, the ever-changing sea and the fresh ozone-filled air, which made you feel alive and excited. I never tired of it. But here, it was different; a painted landscape, dreamlike and magical.
‘Nearly there,’ said Percy, and, opening my eyes, I saw that he was smiling his crooked smile at me. ‘The house is up here.’ We were winding up an empty road towards one of the villages perchés: exquisite fortified villages built on top of small hills of white bauxite or red clay, where houses clustered around a castle and a church and small lanes led you from one fantastic view to another.
‘Are we going into the village?’ I asked.
‘Not quite. We live just outside. More private.’
I nodded. Amyas would like that. He’d teased me about having a private beach in Cornwall, but he’d loved it. But then he’d loved everything about Summer’s Rest. The white-painted rooms, the blue hydrangeas in the garden, the veranda where we sat and looked out on to the bay and my bedroom where we’d . . . I caught my breath. Now wasn’t the time to be thinking of that.
But ever since Percy had walked into my study two weeks ago I’d thought of little else.
‘Needs me?’ I’d taken a huge breath and clasped my hands together to steady them. ‘Why does he need me?’
‘Because he wants to see you before he . . .’ Here Percy’s voice faltered.
‘What?’ I asked but I knew the answer.
‘He’s near the end.’ I could see tears in Percy’s eyes.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, my voice choking. ‘What illness does he have? Can’t it be cured?’
‘I’ve promised not to say.’ Percy frowned. ‘Don’t ask me, Seffy, but please, I beg of you, come and see him. Soon.’
‘But where is he?’ Could he be in London? I wondered. A train ride away? Been there all this time, while I’d lain beside dear Charlie and tried not to remember?
‘He’s at his house in France. I’m going back tomorrow, but if you’ll come, I can meet you in Avignon and take you to him. Please, Seffy. He wants to see you, so much.’
His house in France. He’d told me about it and how we would sit on his terrace and watch the sun go down. I tried to remember where we’d been when he’d told me. Was it here? No. It had been in the hotel in Lisbon, when we went to rescue Xanthe.
I gazed at Percy, my mind full of conflict. Amyas needed me, Percy had hinted that he was dying. I felt rather faint and sat down suddenly. ‘I will try to come,’ I said, my voice low. ‘But it will take me a couple of weeks to make the arrangements. Besides, I have to talk to my husband first.’ Charlie had a right to know.
He was home that weekend. He’d been in Greece, reporting on the civil war, and looked dirty and exhausted when I picked him up at the station.
‘It’s terrible,’ he said. ‘Civil wars are so much worse than wars between nations. Everyone hates and everyone lies.’
‘Who’ll win?’ I asked, driving swiftly through the country lanes. It was May and the hedges were bright with white blossom, and as we got closer to home tantalising glimpses of the sea sparkled on the horizon. The sun had come out to welcome Charlie home.
‘I don’t know,’ he sighed. ‘It depends on whether America will support the right-wing forces. And, anyway, it’ll go on for two or three years yet. Nobody seems ready to give up.’ He sighed and looked out of the window. ‘Don’t let’s talk about it, now. Tell me what you’ve been up to and how the children are.’
‘The children are fine. Marisol is doing tests at the moment to see if she will be able to take the exams to go into big school. She will, of course, and Charlie, that’s something we have to talk about. Are we going to send her to boarding school? And if we are, which one?’
‘Well, you went, and I went and it didn’t do us any harm. But, Seff, I don’t want to send her to some boring place where all she’ll learn is how to be a lady. She needs to have her horizons widened, then she’ll fly.’
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘I want that too and I saw a newspaper article about a school in Somerset; it’s co-ed and very sporty. She’d love it. She could have a couple of years at the high school here first, so that she can keep all her friends and then go on there.’
‘And Max?’
‘Well he could go too. He’s awfully bright, Charlie. The teachers can hardly keep up with him.’
‘Doesn’t take after his mother,’ Charlie laughed, and I laughed too. But that meant that h
e took after von Klausen and I gave myself a little shake. Since the end of the war I’d been increasingly concerned about him. He’d disappeared, even though he’d been on the Allies’ list of wanted men. What if he’d survived and came looking for his son?
Charlie put a hand on my thigh. He knew what I was thinking, he always did, it’s what made us who we were. ‘Don’t worry, Seff. We’d have heard from him by now. And there’s nothing he can do, anyway.’
I wasn’t so sure.
After supper I told him about Percy’s visit. ‘He came here once, before the war, and was talking about going to Spain. Do you remember him?’ I asked. ‘He was there, when you joined the Republicans.’
Charlie shook his head. ‘People did speak about him, but I never met him.’ He sat back and thought. ‘He joined the regular army, when we declared war. I often heard his name mentioned, a brilliant tactician, ended up a colonel, I think.’ He turned to look at me. ‘What did he want?’
I took a deep breath before saying slowly, ‘He wants me to go to France, to see Amyas.’
There was a long silence and then Charlie got up and walked on to the veranda. After a minute I went to join him. He was sitting, hunched up, on one of the chairs, watching the silver moon rise over the sea.
‘I thought we’d finished with Amyas Troy,’ he muttered. ‘My God, Seffy, are you never going to be free of him?’
No. Oh God, no, I wanted to shout. Don’t you understand? I’ll never be free of him. He’s part of me.
But I didn’t voice any of that. ‘I think we will be finished with him soon,’ I said slowly. ‘Percy more or less said that Amyas was dying.’ I paused, waiting for the fluttering in my stomach to subside. ‘He wants to see me before he . . .’ I couldn’t finish the sentence.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
Charlie got up. ‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘I’m going to bed.’
After a few minutes I went to bed also and turning my back to him gazed out of the window at the moon. I didn’t know how to handle the situation. The last thing in the world that I wanted was to hurt Charlie, but I knew I was going to France. Nothing would keep me away.
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