“You stole the words right out of my mouth.”
They took programs and moved quietly toward the pews.
Brandon led Catherine down a side aisle toward the choir and found just enough room in the third row. They waited in companionable silence for the crowd to get settled and Mass to begin.
“A mate of mine told me of a nice pub not far from here,” Brandon whispered to Catherine. “Everything is supposed to stay open all night in celebration, and I thought we might pop in for a look about and a bite afterward.”
She smiled at him. “That sounds perfect.”
…
After leaving the cathedral, Catherine and Jonnie found the rain had started up again. They walked arm in arm beneath the brolly, and every now and then he would refer to a scrap of paper with directions.
Catherine was content to let him find the way to his friend’s pub and simply enjoyed being at his side—he looked so handsome in his uniform. She paid little attention to her surroundings, but, if recollection served, it did seem they weren’t too far away from Fleet Street.
“Ah-ha! Here we are!” Jonnie finally exclaimed as they reached the entrance to an alley.
Catherine peeked out from beneath the brolly and saw a weathered sign on the wall, which read, The Bishop’s Crook Pub. She followed Jonnie down the cobblestoned alleyway, which opened into a little courtyard.
The Crook was a charming establishment that looked as though it had graced the spot for centuries. A wooden sign with a shepherd’s crook hung over the door, and amber light poured through wavy windows made of bottle glass. Atop the facade, ivy spilled over, with tendrils trailing close enough to touch.
“Oh, I already love it, Jonnie!” Catherine exclaimed.
He closed the brolly and opened the door for her, then pointed to an unoccupied table in a corner near the back. As they passed the bar, he called to the barman, “Two pints and two fish and chips, if you please.” He turned to Catherine. “Is that fine with you?”
“Perfect.”
He hung his hat on a hook, helped Catherine with her jacket, and then they sat on a bench next to each other.
Catherine moved closer to him and happily sighed. The smells of beer and tobacco filled the room, along with the sound of lively conversation. A couple stopped by to shake Jonnie’s hand and thank him for his service to king and country.
“This is a beautiful place, Jonnie,” Catherine said. “It feels special. Let’s be sure to come by often.”
“I quite agree. I felt a sense of belonging the moment we walked through the door,” he replied, looking around.
The barman arrived with their order and then extended a hand in greeting. “Tom Lloyd, publican of this fine establishment. I haven’t seen you in here before, but I want to thank you an’ let you know we’re right proud to serve our war heroes. I hope you’ll make us a regular stop.”
“We were just saying we feel very much at home,” Jonnie offered.
Catherine beamed at Jonnie and then turned her gaze on the gracious owner. “You’ve a lovely establishment.”
“Thank you, miss,” Lloyd replied. He touched a finger to his brow, as though tipping a hat. “Been in the family for generations, it has. Since the days of old King Hal, if not a bit before. We take good care of it, an’ it takes good care of the family. Always has.”
Lloyd excused himself in order to return to his duties behind the bar, and Catherine and Jonnie had a quiet meal to themselves. She briefed Jonnie on the progress of the wedding arrangements, to which he smiled and nodded. As the evening wore on, they each shared their hopes and dreams for their future together.
Eventually, as the crowd began to thin, Jonnie looked at his watch and swore softly. “Your father will have my hide if I don’t get you home, and I need to get to the station for the next train back to base.”
“I don’t want to you miss your train, Jonnie. I can catch the tube and get home on my own.”
He leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I would not be doing my duty as an officer or a gentleman if I didn’t see you safely to your door, sweetheart.” He put some money under his empty mug, and they rose to leave.
As Jonnie opened the door, they both paused and looked back inside.
“I have a feeling this spot will come to play a large part in our lives,” Catherine said. “Perhaps we’ll be bringing our children and grandchildren here, one day.”
Jonnie laughed, and, tucked together within the confines of the brolly, they headed back to Stratford.
Chapter Nine
One week after VJ Day, Brandon was dealt a heavy blow. A good friend, Captain Charles Steed, the very man he’d pulled from the wreckage after their base was bombed, had succumbed to injuries sustained just days before the war ended.
Brandon and several others accompanied the body to his hometown of Swanscomb in Kent. After the morning service at All Saints Church, he slipped away with a small wreath of flowers. His mate had talked endlessly of the beauty of the great clipper ship Cutty Sark, berthed nearby in Greenhithe. She’d been the stuff of his swashbuckling dreams since he was a boy. He’d sworn that had the war and the RAF not intervened, he would have made good on his dreams of becoming a privateer and sailing the high seas.
This would be Brandon’s way to pay tribute to a lost mate and his lost dreams.
Deep in thought, he rubbed at the scar beneath his eye as he walked along the pier. He certainly understood Charles’s attraction. The Cutty Sark was a beauty, her tall masts and graceful lines a marvel of hand-hewn engineering, the figurehead under the bowsprit one of the most ornate he’d ever seen.
Brandon blew out hard and tossed the wreath into the water near her bow. He watched the water rings spread and gently lap against the hull.
He snapped to attention. “For king and country and the greatest friend a man could have. Captain Charles Steed, I salute you!” He gave a brisk salute, then pivoted and headed toward shore with a heavy heart.
A woman in ragged dress with an exposed corset staggered toward him. Bugger that, she’s drunk. Her hair was dyed a garish red, her face covered in white greasepaint. He kept his eyes averted and walked along the opposite side of the pier. He had no desire to speak with anyone, especially her.
“Thou art a lovely one, indeed,” she cooed.
He started. She stood not three feet away. How’d she come up on me so fast?
She crooked her finger at him, then licked her lips. “A swive fer a ha’penny?”
Shaking his head, he veered away from the woman. In spite of his revulsion, he had no reason to be rude. She’d probably lost her family and had no other way to earn enough to eat. He wondered if he should give her a quid, just to be rid of her.
Suddenly, she was in front of him, leering at him with a nearly toothless smile. Her breath stank, and she reeked of body odor. He recoiled, but not fast enough. She waggled her tongue, then reached out and took hold of his privates.
“Unhand me, woman!” He swatted her hand off and shoved her away.
She stumbled and nearly fell, but recovered in time. “A blight on thee, then!” she screeched. “Don’t think thyself above mine own station. Thou willst never know when a curse might bring thee low, as it done me.” She shifted her clothing as though adjusting a stole, stuck her nose in the air, then haughtily stalked away down the long dock.
Brandon felt awful over his treatment of the woman, but she’d struck a deeply unsettling cord within him. He certainly hadn’t been prepared for her smell or vulgar touch. He turned back toward the water to shake off the encounter and allow her time to distance herself. He closed his eyes and let the slight breeze soothe him.
The hair rose on the back of his neck. He looked about, assuming the woman had returned. Nothing. Relieved, he took a last look at the Cutty Sark, and…
That isn’t the Cutty Sark!
He blinked and fisted his hands in a vain attempt to control his riotous nerves.
What the…? Think, think.
No, no, no. Clear your head.
Where once the figurehead had been mounted, there was only the bowsprit and an ornately carved sign attached at her starboard bow. The nameplate read, Cisne Negro.
He frowned. That means what? The Black…something.
His knowledge of foreign languages was nil, but it mattered little. He glanced up and down the waterway. Nothing. How could the ships have changed places? He vigorously rubbed at the standing hairs on his arms.
There should have been commotion, sailors working, cursing, time spent, in order to swap out the ships. But it’d only been seconds, a minute or two at most, since he’d taken his eyes off the Cutty Sark.
He backed away from the ship, turned, and searched for the whore to ask what she knew, but the pier stood empty. He scanned the dockside buildings, which looked rough and…made of wattle and daub? Along the waterfront? Such old-fashioned construction was easy enough to find in the countryside, but in an area necessary to the war effort? And hadn’t he seen modern boat manufacturing facilities when he arrived? Yes, he had…Bloody hell!
And then, quite suddenly, everything blurred, shifted, and cleared. Brandon passed a shaky hand over his brow, then cried out when he realized he could see right through his flesh!
Bloody, fucking hell!
Staggered by the implications, he dropped to his knees and gaped. Heart pounding, he watched as his hand lost its transparency. He waved it before his eyes to make sure. Normal.
But…what am I seeing? Is any of this real?
Trembling, he took several steadying breaths, then rose and lifted his gaze. The wattle and daub structures had vanished. In their place, the ugly, wartime-construction buildings stood as he remembered them.
Shaking, sweating, he slowly turned, dread twisting his gut. The Cutty Sark stood quietly at her berth, securely moored. He saw the wreath floating on calm waters near her bow.
And his balls still hurt.
Fear, not logic, told him both “realities” were genuine, but how?
For Christ’s sake, what is wrong with me?
On edge and immensely troubled, his thoughts went to Catherine. Solid, practical, beautiful, loving. He needed her now as a dying man needed the breath of life. He knew a mere touch of her hand would calm him, give him peace, and make everything right.
Of the first two, he was certain. Of the last, less so.
…
Catherine’s delight at having Jonnie show up on her doorstep out of the blue quickly faded. He looked pale, with deep circles beneath his eyes.
“Catherine, would you come home with me? I must speak with you and my father about my health.”
Alarm shook her to her core. “What’s wrong?”
“Please, bear with me. Let me tell you both together.”
Anxious, Catherine accompanied Jonathan to his home. She soon found herself sitting in the lounge with his father, who looked every bit as concerned as she felt.
Jonnie paced the room. “I’ve been having hallucinations and headaches,” he said bluntly. “I’ve seen a neurologist, and he could find no physiological reason for the headaches. I did not dare tell him about the hallucinations, as he would have put me on report, and I would not be able to practice medicine whilst they examined me.”
Nigel hesitated, then said, “Son, you won’t like hearing it, but I had a few mates after the Great War who had the same things happen to them. War fatigue. The Yanks call it shell shock. Reliving battles, sometimes years after the end of the war. You must know all about it, being a physician. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and it’ll ease with time. You’re not going barmy. It’ll fade.”
Jonnie stopped pacing and shook his head. “I’m not reliving battles, Dad. There is nothing about this that has to do with my memories. I…I hear things. Conversations that have nothing to do with me. They sound as though they’re actors in a Shakespearean production. Everything looks normal, but I hear strange things that don’t fit with what I’m seeing at the time.”
Nigel opened his mouth to speak, but Jonnie waved him off. “No, please, let me finish, Dad. The first time one of these episodes happened was in the museum at Hatfield.”
Frightened, Catherine felt as though she could hardly breathe. She glanced at Nigel and saw much of the same emotion on his face.
“I heard a man’s voice. He was chanting something strange—Terra…tirra?—over and over. Utterly unintelligible. And things like that have happened a handful of times since then. Although it’s different every time, there’s always the sense that I’ve crept up on a door, and I’m listening to a conversation. A short time after I returned to base, I was walking and overheard people singing an ancient-sounding folk song. I searched out the singers and found three peasants picking mushrooms. The woods…the entire area looked different. The forest was denser, the tree trunks huge. To make matters even more confusing, I realized no one picks mushrooms in the spring. Then I closed my eyes—briefly—and when I opened them the people and trees had vanished! Jesus, what was I seeing? What is wrong with me?”
Jonnie sat down heavily beside Catherine, and his chin dropped to his chest. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and let out a shaky breath. He looked like a man defeated.
Fear swept over Catherine like a cold wave—fear for him, for them, for their future. An immediate need to protect, to comfort this man she loved pushed back the fear, and she wrapped her arms around him.
“Jonnie, I’m so sorry. I want to help. What can I do?”
“Is there a specific time when these…dreams occur, son?” Nigel asked with a shaky voice.
Anxious, Catherine sat back and looked to Jonnie for his answer.
“If you think I’ve been dreaming, Dad, I’m not. They never happen whilst I sleep. These aren’t dreams. They occur when I am awake and only last a few seconds—until today when I saw a ship called the Cisne Negro. It looked like a pirate ship, for pity’s sake! It could’ve been a galleon, I suppose. Have you ever heard of a ship by that name? Do either of you know what that means?”
Nigel rose. “We’ve the old set of encyclopedias upstairs. I’ll be right back.”
Jonnie passed his hand over his face and looked at Catherine. “Please don’t think I’m a lunatic.”
“Oh, Jonnie, no, of course not!” Her heart felt like it would burst as she saw the torment in his eyes.
“I have it!” Nigel hurried into the room with a heavy tome in his hands. “It says here the Cisne Negro, the Black Swan, belonged to the fleet of Prince Philip of Spain, and it was one of many moored at Greenhithe before the invasion of the Lowlands. He was husband to Queen Mary I, of course, and later king of Spain. The ship is believed to have been burned to the waterline during the Spanish Armada.”
Jonnie straightened, a look of shock on his face.
“What is it? Does that mean something?” Catherine asked.
“Destroyed during the Armada? But how could I have seen it, then?” With his eyes fixed on the floor, Jonnie shook his head and continued with a hushed voice, “I went to Greenhithe today and put a wreath in the water at the bow of the Cutty Sark for a mate who didn’t make it. And it was the Cutty Sark, mind you. I saw her name at the bow.”
He swallowed hard. “A sodding whore with flaming red hair and a ratty, corseted dress accosted me. She…she grabbed my privates and propositioned me. She had almost no teeth, she smelled awful, and, and she spoke…as though she were in some blasted Shakespearean play.”
He rubbed a hand through his hair and down his face. Haggard, he continued, “I sent her packing, and that’s when I noticed the Cisne Negro. It was moored exactly where the Cutty Sark had been, and the Cutty Sark was gone. The whole thing seemed very like the other events, bu
t this time, not only could I hear and see who was talking, I felt her touch and caught her reek. It was as though I’d finally made it inside the room, where before I’d only been listening at the door.”
Jonnie’s gaze wandered, unfocused. “She might’ve been part of a theater troupe, I suppose, but it would have been quite obvious I was spending a solemn moment in tribute. Why on earth would she interrupt—and, for that matter, why would a troupe have been following me about all this time? I simply cannot make any sense of it.”
Dismayed, Catherine didn’t know what to do. She wanted to run home and hide, but she knew she mustn’t. That would be childish, and she was a grown woman now, about to be married to a wonderful, hurting man who needed her support. She put her arms around Jonnie and nestled against his shoulder. “We’ll get this straightened out, darling. I know we will.”
He sighed. “I love you. I love your strength, your faith in me. What would I do without you, Catherine? And you, too, Dad. You are my twin pillars of strength. I should have gone mad weeks ago, I think, if I hadn’t the pair of you to lean on.”
Catherine’s heart ached for him, ached for their future. Something was terribly wrong. His war fatigue—for that must be the cause, regardless of his denial—was very bad, but what could she do? What could any of them do for him? And yet, he seemed calm. Rational. Maybe he just needed time to overcome this trauma.
She certainly hoped so, and she knew what he needed most of all was love and understanding.
She could give him both.
Chapter Ten
For three weeks, Catherine suppressed her mounting anxiety over Jonnie’s revelations. She hadn’t shared his situation with anyone and felt near to bursting. Jonnie never asked her to keep the information quiet, but she couldn’t bring herself to speak with her parents, at least not until she had her own thoughts straight on the subject. Finally, when she could stand it no longer, she decided that discreetly broaching the subject with her dearest friend in order to find her way to clearer thinking was warranted.
Dressed in her utility suit with a matching cloche hat and gloves, Catherine paced outside the small tea room near Victoria Park where she and Poppy were to meet. Her friend still felt uncomfortable going out in public, but this quaint spot was quiet, near Poppy’s home, and familiar to her. Catherine hoped she wasn’t putting undo pressure on her friend, but she needed to see her, needed to confide her worries to someone capable of listening and good with advice. Poppy was just the girl.
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