‘Why did we stand for it?’
‘’Cos we were mugs, mate. We believed the lying bastards. Military breakthrough, my eye. What did they know? We was the ones there while they hid, all snug in their bleedin’ quarters, with their brandy and batmen. And then we get back to Blighty and the family start asking questions, and you can’t tell ’em, ’cos they’d never believe it. They’d never imagine—’
On his return, Johnnie had steadfastly done his duty as officer of his battalion and master of the estate. In every cottage he visited, he’d found mourning and misery, no one seeming able to rally, a dilatory emptiness left by the release from years of tension waiting for the telegraph boy to knock. Every day he made the rounds. Every day he wrote letters of condolence. And every day it seemed to rain.
At night, holed up in his farmhouse, a man with no family of his own and now few friends, he tried to assuage the dreadful nightmares with a bottle of brandy. And his books. Trying to close down his mind…
His nervous breakdown, when it came, was in London on a tube train. They’d been stuck in a tunnel and suddenly a terrible strangling fear had welled up – he’d thought they were under gas-attack – and he’d passed out. Afterwards, all he could remember was a young woman sitting opposite, panic in her face, offering him a handkerchief and her seat. He’d used the handkerchief without thinking and realised tears were streaming down his face. At the next station the woman had scampered away, relieved to escape.
Neurasthenia, otherwise known as ‘shell-shock’, the doctor said, ‘an inner migration to madness’. But this diagnosis brought him no comfort, the guilt at having survived calling up only reproach from the spectres in his dreams. He’d somehow escaped the arbitrariness of death, but Johnnie hated his life as a survivor. The dead ruled the living. And concealing his grief, all alone, he found no remedy for it.
The rambling old farmhouse, which before the war had been the hub of the village, teeming with gossip and farming life, now stood silent, the only sound, night after night, the endless drip of water into enamel buckets. No Harvey to mend the roof and lag the pipes. Harvey, his estate manager, his good sergeant, Captain of the Freston First Eleven.
And out on the silent farmland no longer his team of workers – the fields barren, the rush to war having left the crops unsown. Such young boys, all. His entire battalion, except for himself and Sam, drowned in the sucking clay of Passchendaele.
For over a year he attempted to make a go of the farm, but the fields remained unyielding. And at the unveiling of the War Memorial, when the little town of Freston gathered together in its loss, he was finally forced to acknowledge defeat. He could not farm alone. As the Last Post sounded and he dropped his salute, Johnnie looked away from the bright new memorial cross with its twenty-nine names etched proud and raw – lives, he noted from the inscription, ‘given’ in conflict, not ‘taken’ – and vowed to a God he now knew for certain wasn’t there, This is the last time I will ever wear this uniform.
He watched the group of widows and orphans, under their dripping umbrellas, slowly picking their way home. These wives and sweethearts, mothers and children. And where were the homes fit for the memory of these heroes, heroes of a slaughter called a righteous fight for King and Country?
He would have to do something. He had survived; they were his responsibility. And just in the nick of time, on a trip to London, Johnnie heard the mournful tune of Sam Valley’s mouth-organ and, for whatever reason, he didn’t hurry past.
SS Etoile. Friday, midnight
The light in the little cabin seemed suddenly to become temperamental, it flared and flickered. The din from the engines, however, remained constant.
Johnnie could see Lily was definitely calmer, soothed further – it seemed to him – by the arrival of Mrs Webb. He smiled at the sight of the two women perched together on the lower bunk like a pair of mismatched schoolgirls, whilst he sat cramped on a stool, sideways on. There was an almost carnival air between the three of them.
‘And while young Nickie was being rescued from his school, where were you, Mr Valley?’ asked Mrs Webb. Though no doubt in some discomfort, her bulky frame parked on the edge of the lower bunk, her expression was rapt.
Johnnie was about to reply when, up above, the boy turned in his sleep. Wriggling around in his sheets, he gave a low moan and the three grown-ups held their breath. The mighty engines churned the ship through the strong night seas; it was the only sound in the cabin. The small boy sighed and lay still, deep asleep once more.
Very quietly, Johnnie carried on with the story.
‘I was laying a false trail. I drove Lily’s car up to the North of England and left it at Preston Station. Her brother has a farm up that way, in the Trough of Bowland.’
‘We’re hoping,’ said Lily, ‘that if someone spots the car they’ll think Nickie and I are hiding up there with him.’
‘A ruddy terrible trip it was too, Mrs Webb. Rain, sleet and snow the whole way. Plus an agonisingly slow milk train for my return journey. Didn’t think I’d make the boat in time.’
England. February 1933
Once again came the heaving creak and clunk as the milk train pulled out of the station. Had it said Matlock? Johnnie couldn’t see; no moon, no lights.
Chapel-en-le-Frith, Doveholes Tunnel, Peak Forest Station, Miller’s Dale, Chee Dale. Once upon a time I could remember them all, he thought.
He tried to settle back against the hard seat. Perhaps some sleep now. But he knew it was impossible. The stop-starting of the train at every halt and station made for little continuity of thought, let alone sleep. If only he had thought to buy some sandwiches at Preston Station. Questions kept going round and round his head. Had he put Lily’s car in too obvious a place beside the station’s ticket office? Would this train stop completely and the ship at Southampton sail without him? And without him, how could Lily and Nickie cope on their own?
He held his watch under the beige glow of the carriage light. 3.45 a.m. Dear God, this journey was taking forever.
The train wheezed again to a stop. Cromford. A swinging lamp and a station master, his face hidden in a bundle of wool with only the peak of his cap jutting out. The burly man stamped his feet, supervising the rattling milk churns, their clanging thuds muffled by snow. Thick snow now, Johnnie saw, here in Cromford.
Cromford. He knew the name. And not just as part of a list of stations. Ah yes, Sarah and he had spent a night here. Small hotel and a monstrously lumpy bed. The Greyhound, Cromford. That had been it.
A whistle. He peered out of the window in a vain attempt to catch a glimpse of the small town slipping away into the snowy darkness, to catch hold of the memory.
Cromford and Darley Dale. They’d walked all over, Sarah and he. Walked and walked. She nineteen, he twenty-one. All through their honeymoon. And Darley churchyard with its great yew, two thousand years old. They had been so young, felt so young. And the stifling shyness…she’d never lost that.
In his mind’s eye, he caught Sarah’s face, an unexpected memory. And the clarity of it was so powerful that the rocking carriage was filled with the presence of her. Sarah. I never really knew you. But I did love you, your pretty shining face so trusting. But, oh, my love, I couldn’t save you. And I couldn’t save our child. At my side, all the doctor said, over and over, was, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ as we stared down at your two sleeping faces. Dead.
Forgive me, Sarah. Forgive me.
And with Sarah dead these twenty years, he started to cry, as the little train rocked its way round the hills and climbed slowly down onto the wide plain of middle England. Tears, and the recognition of his enormous grief at the sore, sore loss of this, his first love, and their child.
He leant against the leather and horsehair of the railway-seat, finally full of emptiness. Sarah, he said, I have a new love. Is such a thing allowed? Have I abandoned you?
And Sarah said, No, my dear, you’ve abandoned no one. You’ve kept faith with the memory
of me and the child all these years. Live no more in sadness. Live with the happy memory of our young lives and not with the sadness of our deaths. And he thought, Why have I allowed myself to think about our honeymoon now? For the first time since she died.
Slowly, he pulled back the veil of amnesia. And there, raw and young, lay the sweet innocent joy of their courtship and their married life. So young, so short. Two years only.
If Sarah saw me now, she wouldn’t know me.
And I don’t know me; this old man of forty-five, with a heart newly beating. My poor old heart locked away these many long years, forced to beat again.
And with Sarah’s permission, he thought. Oh, my darling Lily. Don’t let me ever lose you.
Chapter Eleven
Mayfair, London. Friday night, March 1933
Thelma Duttine rose from her dressing table and crossed to the long mirror. In the distance a doorbell rang. She smiled; Charles was early. Good.
She studied her image critically, turning backwards and forwards to the mirror. Yes, she had chosen well from her shop’s new collection; a black crêpe de Chine sheath with a tantalisingly low back, the flowing skirt tricked out with two exquisitely embroidered birds of paradise. The willowy outline was completed by a long sash tied in a bow at the side and, from one shoulder, dancing black ostrich feathers which she had coated with glycerine to make them appear even more lustrous. And she was proud, so proud of her figure; only she alone knowing the agony of her addiction to ‘banting’ and its restrictive diet of lean meat, fish and dry toast. But it was all worth it. For, with her short red-blonde hair softly waved, she knew she looked stunning, the ensemble cunningly distracting from any accurate guess as to her age.
Oh! The anticipation for tonight thrilled. Three years of silent waiting and secret planning.
She unlocked a little drawer beside her bed and drew out a small black and red lacquer box. Opening it, she took out a slim silver syringe and three small paper packets, which she held one by one to the light.
There was a discreet tap at the door. ‘Sir Charles Sutton has arrived, madam.’
‘Tell him I will be down in a moment, Marie.’ He could wait; she was not to be rushed now her ambition was so nearly achieved, her patience about to be rewarded.
She crossed back to her dressing table and unstoppered a small decanter, pouring brandy into a tumbler to which she started to add half of one of the packets of cocaine powder.
Not too much, carefully, carefully. No syringe now. Later, perhaps…
She hummed gently as she lovingly measured out the amount, taking pride in her knowledge; she knew exactly what she was doing. For Thelma, ever since she had been a young nurse in the war and seen the spell cast by the drug, had turned its effect to her advantage. With ambition and discipline, she had made herself so acceptable and ultimately indispensable to the rich young set she had hitherto only longingly read about in her magazines. How clever she had been. How strong. When all about lay stupefied, she was the one, clear-headed, who had taken the taxi to Savory and Moore’s in St James’s, returning with the packets of ‘jolly old chlorers’. She was the one who had listened to her new girlfriends as they doped themselves with brandy and sal volatile, and watched the young men, war-bludgeoned, lace their minds with cocaine. By the end of the war Thelma had got what she wanted: the power of many secrets. And an income.
Which was why, although the world was pleased to think Sir Charles Sutton had provided his mistress with her discreet Mayfair dress shop, Thelma knew her vigorously maintained financial independence to be one of the many sources of sexual challenge between them. Charles Sutton had only two things Thelma Duttine wanted: his title, and his country estate of Melsham.
She smiled. Tonight she knew she looked everything Lady Sutton and the mistress of Melsham should look.
Holding the tumbler up to the light, she watched the powder dissolve. She drank the mixture in one and slipped a violet cachou into her mouth. Her breath must be sweet no trace of brandy. Charles could drink himself into oblivion but he hated the smell of liquor on his women.
She felt her blood begin to sing.
The child, Nicholas, might represent the sentimental memory of his marriage, a Gordian knot that tied him to the dreary Lily. But now the woman had vanished – front-page news for no less than three days – and, so it seemed, had the boy, though this second fact Charles didn’t wish to have trumpeted from the front of every newspaper. Thelma knew how much the man loathed discussion of his private affairs, and if it became known that Lady Sutton had collected the boy from his school before both of them had vanished into thin air, it could lead to a lot of awkward questions. No, for now he wished to play the grieving husband, deluding the world that his wife was suffering from amnesia. The boy’s disappearance he wanted kept secret. Except with the police, of course.
But, truth be told, Thelma couldn’t have cared less where the pair had gone or what had happened to them, except that the timing of their disappearance could not have been more delightfully perfect for what she had planned.
She glanced one last time at her image in the long mirror, noting with satisfaction the opaque glitter flooding her eyes. Tonight, she and Charles would dine at the Berkeley but forgo the nightclub. For, as she had counselled him, the grieving husband of a missing wife must not be seen to be indulging in too much pleasure.
Thelma smiled, the cat with a saucer overflowing with cream. Charles and she could return to her flat in Half Moon Street a couple of hours earlier than usual. It suited her plans beautifully.
She dropped the little red and black box into her evening bag.
SS Etoile. Friday night
‘Pardon me for prying,’ said Mrs Webb. ‘But d’you think your husband knows you’ve run away together?’
‘Almost certainly, Mrs Webb,’ replied Lily.
‘And how long has he known about—’ The woman ran out of steam on this most delicate subject.
Lily came to her rescue. ‘About the two of us?’
The woman nodded. ‘Not wishing to appear nosey, like.’
‘Mrs Webb, if you only knew the relief of having someone to tell. Don’t you agree, darling?’ She turned to Johnnie and reached for his hand. Whoever would have guessed this woman would be our confidante, he thought. But he could see Lily liked her, and her instinct with people was usually pretty spot-on.
‘You bet, Mrs Webb,’ he said. ‘This cabin’s very small when one’s trying to remain calm in the face of adversity. We’re very pleased to have you on board, so to speak.’ The big woman smiled, and Johnnie saw an unexpected youthfulness in the broad battered face.
‘To answer your question, Mrs Webb, my husband found out about Johnnie and I last summer.’ Lily hesitated. ‘It was a very difficult occasion.’
Her head dropped. Johnnie gently stroked her hand. Her openness had surprised him; he knew only too well the painful cost in talking of this. As he stroked her hand, he turned it over and saw the palm with its strange smooth plasticity. The scar of that final meeting, the terrible burn.
For a moment, no one said anything. Much to his relief, Mrs Webb had the sensitivity to ask no questions.
In a brighter voice, Lily said, ‘Up until then, Johnnie and I realised we were trapped in a sort of limbo. We knew the minute I asked my husband for a divorce he’d smell a rat.’ She gave him a twinkling smile. ‘No offence intended, darling.’
‘None taken, I assure you.’ And that, he thought, is why I love you. Never, ever self-pity. ‘You see, Mrs Webb,’ he carried on, feeling permission granted by Lily’s candour, ‘Lily had gone along with the status quo for so many years, coming to terms with her husband’s lady-friends etc, that if, out of the blue, she’d suggested a change of any sort, he’d have instantly become suspicious.’
‘His lady-friends?’ blurted Mrs Webb, despite herself.
‘Oh, yes. In theory, Lily’s husband might still be living in the marital abode but in reality he’d all but moved in with his
lady-friend of many years’ standing. One Mrs Thelma Duttine.’ He heard his voice, even and matter-of-fact, as he talked of the man he hated most in all the world.
‘But the hypocrisy!’ Mrs Webb’s voice was shocked; she looked extremely put out. God bless you, he thought.
‘Ah yes, indeed, Mrs Webb. But Thelma Duttine is very much a fact in Charles Sutton’s life, a fact that is well known to the circle in which he moves. But sadly not a fact that can be used in law to obtain Lily her divorce and custody of her child. He’s told Lily in no uncertain terms that if she asks for a divorce citing Mrs Duttine, he will drag her through the courts and, because of me, leave her reputation in tatters. Thus ensuring she will never, ever gain custody of Nickie.’
‘As I said earlier this evening, Mrs Webb,’ continued Lily quietly, ‘my husband is making me choose between Johnnie and my son. And he is prepared to spend every penny of his considerable fortune to make sure that, although I may have one, I will never have both.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Webb, ‘I’ve never heard the like.’ For once silenced by the injustice of it all, the woman sat shaking her head.
Johnnie and Lily sat silent as well, their story told.
Eventually, Mrs Webb looked up. ‘I’ll do anything and everything I can to ‘elp you good people on yer way.’ Johnnie could hear the emotion in her voice.
‘Thank you,’ said Lily. She leant and patted the woman’s hand.
Feeling a further gesture of thanks was required, he pulled open the bedside drawer and once again produced the bottle of whisky.
‘You’ll join us, I hope, Mrs Webb. Only tooth mugs, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t mind if I do, Mr— Oh, I’m afraid I don’t know yer name now.’
‘Actually it’s Sturridge but let’s stick to “Valley” for the purposes of this trip, eh?’ He smiled at the woman, who positively beamed back, and handed her a mug. ‘Chin, chin,’ he said.
‘But what are yer doing for passports and the like?’
He caught Lily’s smile. ‘All a bit of a palaver but I was in Intelligence during the war and, luckily, kept up a couple of contacts.’ He leant forward and whispered, ‘Forgery, Mrs Webb.’
The Hidden Dance Page 17