The Forgotten Village

by Lorna Cook

  William turned and walked back towards his home.

  It had been news to Freddie to find out tonight that the Anna living and working in his brother’s house was little Anna, William’s sister. Little shy Anna who never used to speak. She’d only been a child back then. He’d been a bit obtuse about that. He didn’t realise how much he’d missed at Tyneham. And how much he missed William, his friend of old, his partner in petty childhood troublemaking, when Bertie wasn’t leading him astray that was. William and Freddie had crossed the class divide. Not that, as children, either of them had realised such a thing really existed until it was brutally pointed out by a disgusted Bertie. Even Freddie’s parents hadn’t cared. Much.

  Freddie was debating what William had said. Had he been away too long? Or had he been away not nearly long enough? As he approached the house he stopped where the gates once stood. He looked back down the avenue of trees, empty of their leaves in midwinter and saw the village in blackout but bathed in pale moonlight. Nearby all was silent, but if he strained his ears, he could hear the sea in the distance; the waves crashing against the rocks by the cove. He’d moved on. It was time to leave. As he mentally said goodbye to the village of his childhood home, he jumped, startled, as a blood-curdling scream came from inside the house.

  CHAPTER 11

  Dorset, July 2018

  Melissa re-read Guy’s note. There were no death records for either of them? What did that mean? Could Veronica and Albert still be alive? In the shower, Melissa used her fingers to try to count up how old they would be now. They looked in their early thirties in the picture, so they’d be in their early hundreds now. Unlikely, but not impossible.

  By half past one, Melissa was growing hungry again. She’d been in Guy’s suite for most of the morning, searching in vain for death records on websites that required a subscription and a credit card. Housekeeping had already come in to clean. She regretted letting them take the breakfast things away. She could murder a leftover croissant right now. The drive home would take about four hours if traffic was at its usual unpredictable level. Guy had asked her to stay to say goodbye. It was the least she could do, seeing as he’d kindly let her crash in his room, so she shut the lid of the laptop, tapped her fingers on it and waited.

  A while later, a key jangled in the door and Guy walked in, looking handsome and well-dressed in chinos and a fitted shirt, but harassed. ‘I’m so sorry. That took a bit longer than I thought it would.’

  ‘It’s perfectly okay. How’s your gran?’

  ‘Stable, I think. Sleeping a lot, which is good, I guess.’

  ‘Oh I’m glad.’

  ‘Um, did you see my note?’ he asked.

  She nodded and looked at him expectantly.

  ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ He grinned.

  ‘I don’t really understand what it means, if I’m honest.’

  He joined her on the sofa.

  ‘Well, simply, it means that either they are both still alive, which is probably not the case, or they both died, maybe in an air raid, but they might not have been accounted for. So there are no records. It’s not as exciting now I say it out loud,’ Guy said, moving on quickly. ‘However, what I did find out that is pretty exciting is that after they left Tyneham, there are no official records for either of them anywhere. Other than that newspaper article you found where he quit as an MP and a by-election was called. And that is it. At first glance, on a few of the subscription services I use … there’s just nothing. No record of them at all.’

  Melissa was quiet while she thought. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Can’t be sure. Maybe they died. Maybe they lived. Either way, the plot thickens.’ He sat back and looked at her expectantly.

  She didn’t look convinced, so he tried again.

  ‘It’s not normal to have no official records at all.’ He looked excited by his discovery. ‘Especially for someone like Sir Albert: wealthy, a former MP. I mean, there’s birth and marriage, but we know about all that, it’s the bit after that’s missing. Electoral roll, boat passenger lists, death records … There’s usually something to hang on to and work back from. But for both of them there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing whatsoever. It’s as if, officially, they completely vanished.’

  Melissa sat back and crossed her legs. ‘So, your guess is that they both died soon after. In an air raid or something like that?’ she asked.

  ‘Who knows. I’ve got to go and pick up some bits from Gran’s house. Come with me? We’ll ask if she remembers hearing anything when we drop them off. Hopefully she’ll be a bit more alert this afternoon.’

  ‘Won’t your gran mind?’ Melissa asked. ‘If she’s recovering, she’s not going to want me there.’

  Guy gave her a knowing smile. ‘If I turn up with a girl, my gran will be over the moon. Trust me.’

  Melissa smiled and looked at her watch

  ‘We can grab a bit of lunch on the way,’ he prompted.

  She nodded slowly. ‘Go on then. But then I really will have to get going after that.’

  Guy grinned.

  They ate sandwiches from a petrol station as Guy drove his shiny black Range Rover down the country lanes towards his gran’s bungalow at Sandford – about twenty minutes’ drive from Tyneham. Guy explained that Anna and her husband had moved here after she’d been demobbed when the war had finished. Melissa glanced at him as he spoke. In a gleaming car and with expensive Ray-Bans on, he looked like a different person, like an ultra-sleek proper celebrity. She could see how easy it might be to bask in the celebrity glow.

  Guy parked outside the bungalow. He walked around to the passenger side to open Melissa’s door, but she was already out of the car by the time he got to her.

  ‘I just need to pick up a few bits. We won’t be long.’

  He opened the bungalow’s front door and held it open for her. Melissa couldn’t remember if Liam had ever held a door open for her.

  The bungalow was neat and tidy inside, a few bits of paramedic debris and oversized empty plaster wrappers were the only sign that anything untoward had happened. Melissa picked them up as Guy closed the front door. She went towards the small, yellow-tiled kitchen to find a bin in which to put the rubbish. Looking around, there were heaps of books piled up on the shelves that ran around the edge of the kitchen underneath the raised cupboards. Cookery books jostled for space between scrapbooks, which in turn fought for plots between gardening books.

  Behind her she could feel Guy watching her. She glanced at him over her shoulder.

  ‘Gran tried to teach me to cook in this kitchen.’ He sounded wistful. ‘She failed. Or I did. I’m still awful.’

  Melissa laughed and Guy fumbled in his jacket pocket, producing a small scrap of paper with a list. He frowned.

  ‘Could you grab a few of these things for me? Er, knickers et cetera. I feel a bit strange going through Gran’s underwear drawers.’

  Melissa smiled and walked past him, taking the paper from his fingers as she went.

  ‘Her bedroom’s first on the left,’ he called after her.

  Guy went to the sitting room to find a few paperbacks to take to hospital and Melissa slowly started searching in the bedroom. There were photographs of a young Guy next to the bed and a black and white one of a man in a British Army uniform who looked uncannily like Guy but who, Melissa thought, had probably been Guy’s grandfather.

  She pulled open the drawers and found the first few items from the list. Glancing around at the wardrobes in search of a dressing gown, Melissa opened the doors and pulled out a soft pink fluffy robe, folded it up and put it on the bed to take to the hospital. Next on the list was writing paper. On the shelf was a cream box. With no sign of writing paper in any of the drawers, Melissa lifted the box down and took a look inside to see if any was lurking in there. There were a few locks of baby hair tied neatly with ribbon and a few picture postcards from various British towns that shared the box with birth and marriage certificates and old passports with the co
rners clipped off. It was a memory box. At random, Melissa flipped over a black and white postcard of Inverness Castle. The postcard was blank where the message should have been. Anna’s name and address were present and the postmark showed 1949. Melissa picked up a few other postcards: there was one for 1950 and 1951 and then one a year until 1970. Each was blank. There were more postcards inside, but Melissa heard Guy cough and she hastily shoved everything back in the box and almost threw it up onto the shelf for fear of being caught snooping.

  Guy was by the front door holding a bag when Melissa emerged from the bedroom. She put in the bits she’d gathered and they left for the hospital.

  ‘Gran, this is Melissa.’

  ‘Hello, dear, how are you?’ Anna asked, her eyes crinkling as she smiled. ‘As you can see, I’m in a bit of a pickle.’ She winked and her heavily wrinkled eyelid closed and opened slowly. Her grey hair was long and piled up into a loose bun on her head. Melissa could see a faint trace of the seventeen-year-old girl in the photograph from the exhibition.

  Melissa liked her instantly. ‘I hope you don’t mind my coming along. I met Guy at the opening of Tyneham a few days ago.’

  ‘I know, dear,’ the older lady said. ‘He’s talked about nothing else since.’

  ‘Gran!’ Guy sounded like a horrified schoolboy.

  Melissa misunderstood. ‘Well, Tyneham is a very special place. It’s pretty much all I’ve thought about since I visited too.’

  Anna gave Melissa a curious smile and put her head to one side.

  ‘We brought the things you asked for,’ Guy hurried on.

  ‘Are you in any pain?’ Melissa asked. ‘Is there anything else we can get for you?’

  ‘No, No. I’m drugged up to the eyeballs. It’s marvellous actually.’

  Melissa laughed.

  ‘So, what did you think of Tyneham?’ Anna smiled.

  ‘Amazing. I’ve never been anywhere that atmospheric before, even with all the tourists. We went to the Great House, where Guy said you worked.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Anna stiffened and looked down at the white sheet covering her bed. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have very fond memories of that house. I miss the village and my home, the church on Sunday, the friends that scattered far and wide. But the Great House … It’s a beautiful building. Not a nice place though … not in the end.’

  Guy exchanged a look with Melissa.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, reaching to the bedside table on wheels to pour his grandmother a glass of water.

  ‘The owner wasn’t very nice. Thank you, dear,’ she said, taking the glass and sipping.

  ‘To you?’ asked Melissa.

  ‘To anyone,’ Anna returned. ‘Anyway …’

  Melissa looked wide-eyed at Guy to nudge him on.

  ‘Erm, Gran, we were wondering, and this may seem a bit strange, but Melissa’s got a bee in her bonnet about Lady Veronica.’

  ‘What about her?’ Anna asked with a kind smile, before taking another sip.

  Melissa spoke up. ‘This sounds so bonkers when I say it out loud. But the photo in the church display shows her looking a bit odd, a bit frightened maybe.’

  Anna stayed very still, her lips just touched the rim of her glass, but she had stopped sipping.

  Melissa continued, ‘All the display boards tell you what happened to each family and their general whereabouts after the requisition, but there’s nothing about Lady Veronica, or her husband for that matter actually. I just wanted to know that she was all right, I suppose. I think only because she looked a bit strange in the photo. Oh I don’t know. I feel mad now. Just ignore me.’

  Anna’s voice sounded strange. ‘She was fine, dear.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to her? Where she went?’ Guy asked.

  ‘They went to London for a short while and then they moved away. I heard from her occasionally. She wrote. Only a bit, mind. But she was fine.’

  ‘Oh phew,’ Melissa said. ‘Great.’

  ‘This is a bit strange, Gran, but how did they die?’

  Anna’s smile faded. ‘Die?’

  ‘They aren’t still alive are they, her and her husband?’ Guy asked. ‘I mean, they’d be in their hundreds now if they were.’

  ‘I’m not sure. They were much older than me. Lady Veronica was in her early thirties when she left Tyneham. I was only seventeen. I imagine they must both be dead by now,’ she said. ‘Comes to us all.’ She looked pointedly around the hospital ward.

  Guy had a frown on his face. ‘But you didn’t hear that they’d died, in an accident or something like that?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘No. I lost touch with them a long time ago.’

  Guy nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘They probably died of old age,’ Anna reasoned.

  Guy stopped nodding. ‘Well, no. They can’t have. That would mean they’d have died in the nineteen eighties or nineties in all likelihood. Records were kept better. Their deaths would have been logged.’

  Melissa’s eyes flicked back and forth slowly from Guy to Anna throughout the exchange. Melissa thought Anna looked lost. Actually, Melissa was starting to feel lost.

  ‘What do you mean?’ the elderly lady asked.

  ‘They have no death records, which is odd by today’s standards. But not back then, in the forties, in the confusion of war. Lots of records went missing or deaths weren’t logged as people were buried alive in bomb craters or not identified after the damage was cleared. I mean, the entire 1931 census records were destroyed during the war. Completely obliterated. But that kind of thing doesn’t happen now. It’s all logged electronically these days. I assumed perhaps Veronica and Albert had been in an accident together for both their deaths to have been—’

  Anna cut him off. ‘No, dear. They were both fine. They didn’t die in the war. We lost contact in the 1970s, so I think perhaps they might have died then, or perhaps she did as I never received a … The communication stopped then. They were both fine. I last saw them the day they left Tyneham and that was a long time ago. I don’t know what happened to them after that, but they were fine.’

  There was silence while Guy and Melissa digested the information.

  Melissa’s brain kicked into gear. Why, if they had outlived the war and the administrative confusion that could have easily missed two people dying in some kind of bombing accident, had their deaths not been recorded if they were still alive and writing letters to his gran in the 1970s? Melissa looked at Anna, who in turn was looking into her half-empty water glass. Melissa refilled it. Anna looked at her gratefully.

  ‘You said Sir Albert wasn’t very nice to everyone. Did that include his wife?’ Melissa started.

  ‘Do you know, my dears, I’m quite tired now. Would you mind if I had a little rest?’

  ‘Oh gosh, of course not. Sorry, Gran, we’ve tired you out,’ Guy said, and he and Melissa stood up.

  ‘Thank you, my darling. Your mum should be here for the evening visiting hours, so don’t feel obliged to pop back, will you?’

  Guy had been dismissed. ‘Erm, all right. Get some sleep. I’ll pop in tomorrow.’

  They headed back to the hotel and for the first ten minutes Guy drove in silence. Melissa stared out of the passenger window, her lips pursed together, itching to say what she was sure Guy was thinking. Every now and again she glanced at him. His brow was furrowed and he had a puzzled expression on his face.

  Melissa was impatient, unable to remain silent for much longer.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ she asked him tentatively as he pulled into the Pheasant and Gun’s car park.

  Guy blew out a puff of air from his cheeks. ‘I think,’ he said slowly, shaking his head, ‘that she’s hiding something.’

  CHAPTER 12

  Tyneham, December 1943

  From inside the house, Anna’s scream pierced the night. Behind her bedroom door, a chair had been wedged under the handle, but it was starting to show the strain, its back legs creaking with every crash that Bertie’s body made against th
e other side. Madness had gripped him and he was thrashing his way through the wood, attempting to either break the door down by snapping it from its lock or forcing a hole through the wood panels. It was clear he didn’t care which. If only she had something to fight him off with.

  He’d tried before but never like this. Never. She was frightened. Why now? Why at the end? What had she done?

  There had been plenty of times when he had caught her alone, when he had put the fear of God in her, but had never followed through. But now he was drunk. Horrendously drunk. Worse than she’d ever seen him before. And he was coming for her.

  In the corridor, the thrashing stopped momentarily as raised voices started up from the end of the hallway in the servants’ sleeping quarters.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Veronica screamed at Bertie. ‘Anna, are you all right?’ Veronica shouted down the landing towards Anna’s bedroom.

  Anna was against the far wall in her room, too scared to scream back that she was fine. Sir Albert was a man possessed and in this state he clearly didn’t care who he had in front of him, as long as he had someone. And now Veronica was out there with him.

  ‘Run, Lady Veronica!’ Anna eventually managed to shout, although the words that left her mouth sounded rasping and not her own. ‘Run!’

  In the dark of the hallway, Veronica backed away from Bertie. His staggering body lurched towards her like some kind of demonic entity. His eyes were narrow and black, his face unreadable and still, although Veronica could see from the splintered door what his intentions had been.

  ‘You’ve had too much to drink again, darling.’ The tone of endearment sounded wrong, misplaced, about a year too late. Veronica tried to use her calmest voice, but it wavered amid the fear. Bertie smiled dangerously and Veronica moved along the dark of the hallway, with only the chink of light from underneath Anna’s door to guide her back to the servants’ staircase.

  As she turned and ran, she crashed into something tall, muscular and smelling faintly of cigarette smoke.

  ‘What on earth …?’ Freddie said as Veronica thudded against him. ‘What’s going on? I heard screaming.’