The Forgotten Village

by Lorna Cook

  Melissa wanted to know who Veronica had been having an affair with. Whoever it was, they’d been present the day before the requisition because John and Reg had rumbled them in the beach hut. But it couldn’t be one of the villagers because John would have recognised the man as one of his friends or at least someone he’d seen in church on Sunday or in a shop or something. There were only two hundred-odd people in the village. It was a small population. So who was it?

  Melissa’s logic ran out there and she wanted nothing more than a sit-down and a large glass of cold wine. Actually, that wasn’t true. She wanted nothing more than to sit down and tell Guy what she’d learned. She smiled, thinking about Guy, and then stopped herself as she recollected what Reg had said about protesting too much.

  If she went back to the hotel and told Guy, she’d still be able to hit the road and make it home to London for a very late dinner and to crawl into bed. Maybe. And if not, then who cared? This was too important to her now.

  Melissa got into her car and gave a little smile of anticipation and then winced as she crunched the gears, driving as quickly as the speed limit allowed towards the Pheasant and Gun.

  CHAPTER 20

  Guy was in the hotel’s garden, sitting at one of the many wooden picnic tables that were scattered around the grounds. He had his mirrored Ray-Bans on and was nursing a pint as he read a newspaper.

  As Melissa walked towards him, the evening sun cast her long shadow over his paper and Guy looked to one side, clearly waiting for whoever it was to change direction so he could continue reading. Melissa stopped in front of him. Although she’d only left him hours ago, she found she was overwhelmingly happy to see him again. Perhaps it was because he was the voice of calm in this whole crazy thing. Perhaps it was because he was, quite simply, a rather kind and incredibly attractive man. Pack this in, Melissa, she told herself.

  When she stopped in front of him it obviously took him a few seconds to realise it was her. He smiled politely and as she moved to one side, the rays fell over him again.

  Hi,’ Melissa said with a smile. ‘I didn’t get very far.’

  His slow smile turned into a broad one and he folded his newspaper up. ‘No you didn’t. I thought you were on your way back home?’

  ‘I was.’ She laughed and sat down on the opposite side of the picnic table. ‘And then I wasn’t. I went past Tyneham and I just couldn’t resist seeing if Reg was still there. And, well,’ Melissa teased, ‘you’ll never guess what I found out,’ she said, leaning forward with enthusiasm.

  Guy laughed and then leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘You went back? I’m impressed. We’ll make a historian of you yet. Go on then. I’m all ears.’

  She told him everything she’d learned from Reg. Guy’s smile quickly faded and then his mouth dropped open halfway through her story and stayed open until she finished. He coughed as his throat went dry. Melissa slowly pushed his pint towards him and he downed the rest of it in one go.

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said, when he’d finished. ‘I mean … wow. Just wow.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’ She looked around and signalled a waitress over. ‘Large glass of Sauvignon please and a glass of ice to keep it cool.’ The waitress looked at Guy as he ordered another pint, smiling at him unnecessarily. Melissa said ‘thanks’ pointedly to get rid of her. Guy gave Melissa a puzzled look and Melissa looked back at him as if he wasn’t all there. Guy was totally oblivious to any female attention. It was almost as if he had no idea how attractive he was.

  ‘Well, while you were on the road to London and then Tyneham and then back here again,’ he said with a smile. ‘I found something a little bit interesting too.’

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Is it as interesting as my story about Lady Veronica shagging someone in the beach hut the day before the village got requisitioned?’

  He pulled his laptop out from his bag on the floor. ‘No. Close though.’

  Guy opened his laptop up and searched for a folder. Finding it, he opened a screenshot, waited for the approaching waitress to deliver their drinks order and then spun the laptop round to her.

  Melissa pounced on it and scanned down the screen. It was a newspaper clipping from January 1944. In it was a black and white picture of Sir Albert and Lady Veronica. They were standing a small distance from each other, only a few inches apart. She was in a pale evening dress and he in a black formal suit. Sir Albert and Lady Veronica Standish enjoy a pleasant evening at Lady Newland’s New Year’s Eve Ball.

  Melissa stared at the page. Her smile disappeared and she looked up, past Guy and into the distance, thinking.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ he said, turning the computer round to check she was looking at the right thing. ‘She’s alive and well here. And at a party no less.’ He tapped at the screen. ‘Ta-da.’

  Melissa was confused.

  Guy continued, ‘Whoever she was with in the beach hut, it obviously wasn’t serious. Not serious enough to leave her husband for anyway.’

  Melissa sipped her wine and looked down.

  ‘What is it?’ Guy asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. It just doesn’t seem to make much sense. I would have expected some kind of repercussion. A week or so after Sir Albert finds out his wife is sleeping with someone right under his nose, there the two of them are at a ball. They look like they’ve patched things up rather quickly. Why didn’t she leave him?’

  ‘It happens.’ Guy shifted uncomfortably. ‘People forgive. Things were different back then. Stiff upper lip and all that. Perhaps that was what brought them back together. Perhaps he realised what a complete sod he’d been and the two of them lived happily ever after?’

  A wry smile formed on her lips. She thought of Liam and his long-term cheating. ‘Not sure I could be that forgiving. What else did you find?’

  ‘Oh. That was it, I’m afraid.’ He indicated the picture on the laptop.

  ‘This is hopeless.’ Melissa glanced at her watch.

  ‘Don’t say you’re leaving again?’ He looked exasperated.

  ‘No,’ she smiled. ‘I’ll stay tonight. I’ve got enough time to find a cheap and cheerful hotel. Then tomorrow I’ll head off.’

  ‘I have a better plan,’ Guy said. ‘And don’t fret, it doesn’t involve staying in my room again. Just wait there a minute.’

  Melissa watched him walk past her and looked at him curiously.

  ‘All will be revealed,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘If my plan works that is.’

  She sipped at her wine and put a few cubes of ice in as she turned to watch him walk through the garden and towards the hotel. He turned back and smiled at her as he went. He was cute. And, more importantly, he was nice. ‘Oh, Melissa.’ She slapped the palm of her hand against her forehead. She had broken up with Liam yesterday and twenty-four hours later was finding it far too easy to fancy another man. The last thing she wanted to do was jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  Guy was taking an age and she swung round, stretching her legs out in front of her into the sunshine while leaning back against the picnic table. She drank her wine, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the rays.

  Guy walked back across the grass, casting a shadow over Melissa. Her eyes sprang open.

  ‘So what’s this grand plan?’ she asked.

  ‘Left or right?’ He indicated his hands, which he’d put behind his back.

  She grinned and pointed towards his left arm. He produced a large key on an even larger wooden key ring.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘It’s a present. If I told you I had to negotiate hard to get this, would you believe me?’

  ‘No, I’d imagine you didn’t have to negotiate at all because you waved your celebrity card at someone and they just gave it to you,’ she teased.

  He rolled his eyes and grinned.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that, Guy. I can pay for my own room.’

  ‘I know. But I wanted to. It’s just a small present. It’s only for a
few nights.’

  ‘But I’m going home tomorrow!’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t go home. Stay. Just for a bit longer.’

  Melissa felt a little bit breathless all of a sudden as his eyes locked on hers.

  ‘I’m enjoying myself far too much with you,’ he said. Melissa felt the same but didn’t dare say it.

  He sat down opposite her and she swung her legs back underneath the table.

  ‘I’ve not had this much fun in … well, I can’t remember when. So you’re doing me a favour, really,’ he said. ‘And even if we spend tomorrow discovering that Veronica and Albert Standish went on to have seventeen children and were blissfully happy living in the Caribbean then, marvellous, mission accomplished. We’ll have got to know each other a bit better. I’ll have taken a few much-needed days off work and you’ll have had that holiday you were promised but never quite got because that ex-boyfriend of yours couldn’t get off his surfboard.’

  ‘Bravo,’ Melissa said through laughter.

  The waitress passed by and asked if they wanted refills. Now Melissa wasn’t driving anywhere, she nodded.

  ‘Yes please,’ Guy said, without taking his eyes off Melissa. They were both smiling and his gaze was still on hers, making her feel a heady mix of excitement and nervousness at the same time. Melissa felt his little speech was a declaration of something but she couldn’t quite place what. He just wanted to get to know her, spend time with her. He’d bought her a room for a few nights. He could have easily said there were no rooms and offer to have her stay in his suite again, but he’d been generous and gentlemanly and Melissa was trying hard not to like him quite so much.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, reaching forward to take the key. ‘But I’m paying for the room.’ She brushed aside the beginnings of Guy’s protest. ‘Only let’s not tell the woman on the front desk, in case she takes the room back. What was in your other hand?’

  He looked down to the side of the picnic bench where he’d placed the other item out of sight and then pushed it over the table towards her. It was a well-thumbed book titled A Complete History of Tyneham. Its spine was broken and plenty of pages were falling out.

  Melissa fell on it. ‘Where on earth did you find this?’

  ‘It was on a bookshelf by the reception desk. There are a few local history books guests can borrow and that was sitting there.’

  He got up and sat next to her to look at it, placing his sunglasses on the table. They read a few pages together in interested silence. Melissa could feel the heat from his body as he sat close to her. The faint scent of his aftershave smelled lovely. She tried to concentrate on the book. The pictures, where there were any, were grainy and dark and blown up larger than they should have been so they were pixelated and blurry. It was an amateur effort and they were both a bit disappointed. There was nothing particularly useful in there they hadn’t seen on the boards or learned through other methods. There was a bit of backstory about the Standish family through the ages and how they came to have the house, which was gifted to them by Charles I for ‘services rendered’ along with a knighthood. Prior to that the house had been seized and redistributed numerous times throughout the religious chops and changes of the Tudor dynasty until the last family to own it before the Standishes lost all their money during the Stuart reign and the Crown seized it.

  ‘Why don’t we go out tomorrow and get some other local history books, see what we can find?’ Guy suggested. ‘There must be some more books on Tyneham with a bit more useful information.’

  ‘And some with pictures we can see too.’ Melissa closed the book and handed it to Guy as her phone rang. She didn’t recognise the number on the caller display.

  ‘Hello?’ she answered.

  ‘Hello, love,’ the male voice at the other end said.

  ‘Reg! You rang! Did you find anything?’

  ‘I’ve been having a little look through the box of John’s things. I’m sorry to say …’ he started and Melissa’s heart sank, imagining he was going to say that he’d found nothing, ‘that I’ve found something rather … er … downright nasty, I suppose is the best phrase for it.’

  ‘Nasty?’ Melissa sat up straight.

  Guy looked up from the book and gave her a questioning look.

  ‘John didn’t have much time to write home, it would seem. He wasn’t at war very long before he copped it at the hands of the bloody Germans. He must have known he might not make it back. So, in one of his few letters, he says something pretty inflammatory.’

  ‘Really?’ Melissa couldn’t hide her curiosity.

  ‘Brace yourself.’ Reg took a deep breath as he read the letter out. ‘There’s a few bits of detail about how well he’s eating and things like that. He knew what to say to keep Mum happy. Anyway, he gets to his confession in a roundabout kind of way.’ Reg cleared his throat as he read John’s words: ‘Mum, I need to tell you something. About Lady Veronica. It’s been eating me up. Mum, I didn’t give Lady Veronica that warning note you wrote, telling her Sir Albert knew that she was up to no good with that man in the beach hut. I tried to. But I didn’t. Now you, Dad, and Reg aren’t living at Tyneham anymore, and now you’re safe, I can tell you this. I couldn’t before. I daren’t. I hope you’ll understand why.

  ‘When you gave it to me, I ran as fast as I could. But Sir Albert had a head start. She wasn’t in the beach hut anymore and when I got to the house, he saw me before I could go to the tradesman’s entrance and ask one of the maids to fetch her.

  ‘He said some terrible things to me. I was clutching the note for dear life and I’d screwed it into a little ball so he wouldn’t see it. He wanted to know why I was there and I lied. I told him I was there to say sorry and that I was lying about what I saw, even though I wasn’t. He laughed at me and said he knew I was trying to help, but it was too late for her now. He told me to leave and I tried to stand my ground, I really did. But, oh dear lord, he said things that scared me. About you.

  ‘“There are things I’ve been wanting to do to your mother.” That’s what he said, if I ever went near Lady Veronica again.

  ‘And then I could see her, inside the house. She was at the window and I couldn’t get to her. I daren’t. After what he said. I panicked. I ran. I didn’t want him hurting you. Or worse. And when I got home and you held my shoulders and demanded to know that I’d given her the note, I lied to you. I said I had, when I hadn’t. Because I didn’t want him coming anywhere near you. I lied. I’m sorry.’

  Melissa couldn’t speak.

  ‘He goes on to say other things about the war before he signs off,’ Reg said. When Melissa didn’t reply, he asked, ‘You still there, love?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her mind was whirring and she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘Like I said … nasty,’ Reg clarified.

  ‘Very,’ Melissa agreed. ‘Very nasty indeed.’

  ‘He was a monster. He was going to go for my mum, wasn’t he?’ Reg sounded far away.

  From what Melissa had discovered about Sir Albert so far, she believed he probably would have tried to inflict some kind of punishment on Reg and John’s mum, had John warned Veronica. Although in what way, she could only imagine.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Melissa agreed. ‘Your mum wrote a note to Veronica to warn her,’ Melissa spoke out loud, trying to piece it together. ‘I don’t blame John for not trying to get the note to Veronica after running into her husband. I don’t think I’d have done it either, to be honest.’

  ‘Good,’ Reg said. ‘That makes me feel better. Mum tried to help her. But John didn’t want to risk anything bad happening to our family.’

  ‘Is there anything else in the box, Reg? Does John mention it again in another letter perhaps?’

  ‘That was his last letter home before he died.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Melissa’s hand flew to her mouth.

  ‘You know, it’s strange seeing his handwriting again after all these years. I can hear his voice in these letters. It’s like he�
��s still here …’ Reg trailed off.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Melissa said. ‘Thank you so much for finding that for me.’

  ‘Melissa?’ Reg asked. It was the first time he’d used her name.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What are you trying to achieve?’

  Melissa felt horribly guilty for having had Reg look through letters that had resulted in his sadness. John’s letter home had been poignant, revealing and his last. She listened to the slight crackle of the phone line. ‘I don’t know.’ She sighed.

  After she said goodbye to Reg, Melissa explained the phone call to Guy. They both inched together on the seat to discuss it without being overheard. By the end, as Melissa confessed how entirely awful and guilty she felt, she looked up to gauge Guy’s reaction and found she was only a few inches from his face. He was wearing a serious expression and hadn’t yet spoken. They were still in close proximity and while Melissa waited for him to say something, she wondered if it was her imagination that electricity fizzled in the silence between them. Melissa’s eyes were drawn down to Guy’s mouth. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him and in her current emotional state didn’t care if it was appropriate or not given that she’d just been dumped.

  The same waitress appeared, thumping menus they hadn’t ask for onto the table. Guy and Melissa sprang apart. The moment was lost.

  CHAPTER 21

  They ate dinner outside. Every time they passed the salt or the water jug and their fingers touched, they glanced at each other awkwardly, apologetically. They talked into the night and Guy gave her his jacket when it became chilly.

  ‘So what do you have waiting for you back in London?’ he asked. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but what’s the situation with your job?’

  She sighed, reluctant to admit her life was boring and her working life even more so. ‘I used to work in magazines. I hated it. I tried to get into journalism, but all I could get were jobs in advertising sales. Not even with the glitzy brands, just the classifieds at the back. And even then I was just doing the admin. I couldn’t seem to get anywhere. I was in a cute little coffee shop near work one day and the girl who owned it seemed so happy, so chuffed not to be stuck in an office. Well, that’s how I interpreted it. The music was playing, customers were chatty and queuing out the door. I wished I was her, or at least I wished I could be in there all day. I’m not saying I want to open a coffee shop, but I realised there was no point slogging it out on very little money for a job I hated. So when they offered voluntary redundancy, I leaped at it. I’m temping until I work out what I really want to do.’ She glanced at him nervously. ‘Do I seem like a mess?’