by Sandy Taylor
I am sorry to be the bearer of such sad news. I only had the privilege of meeting Mr Kovak on two occasions but I found him to be an extraordinary and fascinating man.
Can you please arrange an appointment at your convenience to go over the details. I look forward to meeting you both.
Yours faithfully,
George Martyn
I put the letter in my pocket and walked down to the seafront. The sea always calmed me. I felt as though my heart had been ripped out. Yann had been like a father to me and Olive when I feared my own father had died. I thought that he would always be there and now he was gone. I closed my eyes and tried to picture his face, the way his eyes crinkled up when he laughed and the way they filled with tears when his heart was moved by a piece of music or the sight of the first crocus or fresh snow covering the hillside. I remembered sitting beside the fire in the big kitchen. I remembered the pretty bedroom where I had been so ill. I remembered the lovely garden that looked out over the hills. It all belonged to me and Olive now, but it was hard to be excited because Yann wouldn’t be there: I would rather have Yann than all the houses in the world.
I watched a group of soldiers dismantling the horrible barbed wire. Soon the beach would be open again and children would once more paddle in the icy water and play in the rock pools. Soon I would stand at the edge of the ocean with Lottie, but I would never see Yann again.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The day before Lottie and I left for Wales, Olive and I decided to spend some time with our family. We hadn’t spent a lot of time with them and I wanted Olive to start feeling at home in the new house. I knew it was what Mum and Dad wanted too.
It was lovely being together again. There was so much more room here than in the flat in Bermondsey and, with the furniture from Sea View, it was beginning to feel like home.
In the afternoon we all went for a walk along the seafront, Olive running ahead of us, holding onto little Freddie’s hand.
‘This is what I dreamed of, Nell,’ said Mum as we walked along by the sea. ‘All of us together. There were times when I feared it would never happen.’
‘I felt the same, Mum,’ I said. ‘When Auntie Beth told me that Daddy was missing I was so scared, and then when we got back to Bermondsey and saw that Rannly Court had been bombed, I thought you were all dead; I thought I’d never see you again.’
‘We’ve been blessed,’ said Daddy. ‘We must have had a guardian angel looking after us all.’
‘I think we did,’ said Mum.
Once we were back at the house we all sat round the table eating a lovely stew that Mum had made for us. We laughed and giggled at things that weren’t even that funny because we were so full of happiness.
As darkness began to fall outside the window it grew chilly, so Tony made a lovely fire in the grate. Mum put little Freddie to bed and we sat around in chairs and on the floor, tired but contented and just happy to all be together at last.
Olive suddenly climbed onto Dad’s lap and I could see his face light up to have his little girl in his arms again.
‘What happened to you, Dad?’ I asked gently. ‘In the war. How were you injured?’
‘Do you really want to hear this, Nell?’ he said.
I nodded.
‘I’d like to hear it as well,’ said Tony.
‘And me,’ said Olive, looking up at him and then adding, ‘as long as it’s not too gory. I’m not into gory!’
Daddy smiled and took a deep breath. ‘I was serving on a destroyer called the Bedouin when we were torpedoed by the Italians. A lot of the crew died but I was lucky and just took a hit to my leg and my back. The ship sank, but with the help of the officers and crew I survived. We were a sorry bunch. Me and some other chaps that were injured were put into the lifeboats and the rest were left hanging onto anything they could find to keep them afloat. We were cold, exhausted and covered in fuel oil. We were about a hundred yards away when the Bedouin went down. She’d been a good ship and many of those tough seamen were crying to see her disappear below the water. We drifted for what seemed like hours until we were rescued by an Italian hospital boat.’
‘You were rescued by the same people that torpedoed you?’ said Tony.
‘We were. Two hundred and thirteen men were saved that night.’
‘What happened then, Daddy?’ asked Olive.
‘We were taken to an island called Pantelleria and put in a prisoner-of-war camp.’
‘Were they nice to you, Daddy?’ said Olive, her eyes filling with tears. ‘They didn’t hurt you, did they?’
‘No, my love,’ said Daddy, kissing the top of Olive’s head. ‘We were treated well; the Italians were fair and not cruel. We stayed there for about ten days and then moved to another camp called Santa Ninfa.’
‘Funny old names,’ said Olive.
‘They were,’ said Daddy, smiling at her.
‘We were to move camp another three times before we were eventually released and shipped back home.’
‘And then you went to the hospital?’ asked Olive.
‘I had to have an operation on my leg, which hadn’t healed properly. But I was home and all I could think about then was getting back to you lot.’
‘And Mummy found you?’ prompted Olive.
‘She did,’ said Daddy, ‘and then we found you.’
‘So it wasn’t so bad?’ said Olive.
‘Walk in the park,’ said Daddy, laughing.
* * *
Early Saturday morning, Lottie pulled up outside Sea View in her mum’s little black car. Mrs Wright had packed enough food to feed an army and Mrs Baxter had added blankets and a torch. You’d think we were about to scale Everest.
‘Best be prepared,’ said Mrs Baxter. ‘You never know what you might encounter along the way.’
We were hugged and kissed and waved off at the door. As the car pulled away I looked back and I could swear that Mrs Baxter was dabbing at her eyes with a hankie. I owed these two women so much and I had grown to love them as if they were family.
The night before, Olive had decided to stay at Mum and Dad’s.
‘Will Henry be okay with it?’ I’d said.
‘Sometimes, Nell, you just have to do what’s right. I mean, it’s not going to kill him to do without me for one weekend, is it? He gets to see me every day but Mum and Dad and Tony and Freddie don’t, do they? He has to understand that I must spread myself around. So Henry will just have to get over it.’
Sometimes my little sister was wise beyond her years.
* * *
We had left Eastbourne behind us and were soon speeding along the coast road. It was lovely.
‘I can’t believe you can drive a car,’ I said.
‘Like I said, there was sod all else to do down there.’
‘No handsome Cornish fishermen?’
‘Not my type.’
‘And what’s your type?’
Lottie grinned. ‘Gerraint is my type, he’s definitely my type.’
‘Does he know you’re coming?’
‘I thought I’d surprise him. He knows I’m back in Brighton and he knows I’ve found you but I haven’t told him about this trip.’
‘And how do you think he’ll react?’
‘I think he’ll hit me over the head with a club and drag me off to the nearest cave.’
‘Sounds painful.’
‘It wouldn’t be true love if there wasn’t a bit of pain involved.’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘What aren’t you telling me, Nell Patterson? Have you had a secret affair?’
‘Sort of.’
‘And you haven’t told me!’ she screeched.
‘It was a bit of a disaster, best forgotten really.’
‘Let’s stop and have one of Mrs Wright’s sandwiches.’
‘Already?’
‘Other people’s disasters give me an appetite. Besides, I need to be able to concentrate.’
Lottie pulled over and we unwrapped
the sandwiches. ‘Okay, tell me everything,’ she said.
‘Well, his name’s Robert and he’s in the Canadian Air Force.’
‘Sounds promising.’
‘It was to start with but he’d neglected to mention a wife and child waiting for him back home.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Nell. Were you terribly heartbroken?’
‘I was terribly angry.’
‘Good girl.’
‘I did forgive him though.’
‘I wouldn’t have expected anything less from you.’
‘Well, he was going off to war and somehow it seemed the right thing to do.’
‘You’re a nicer person than I am, Nell. I would have let him go off to war with more than a flea in his ear.’
I grinned. ‘I bet you would!’
‘So you got over him? It didn’t put you off men for life?’
‘It’s made me a bit cautious.’
‘What about that boy, Jimmy, the one you talked about in your letters? It sounded as if you liked him.’
‘He was lovely and I would love to see him, but if, as you say, the farm has been sold, he’ll be long gone. He could be anywhere, Lottie. I doubt I’ll ever see him again.’
‘But you’d like to?’
I nodded. ‘I’d love to.’
‘Then we’ll jolly well ask around – we’ll be like two private detectives, we’ll interrogate everyone who might have known him. We’ll find him, Nell.’
‘If he wants to be found.’
‘You’ll never find him if you think like that. You have to be positive, my friend.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘My curiosity has been satisfied,’ said Lottie, starting up the engine. ‘Let’s go find our men.’
‘Yes, let’s,’ I agreed. I was so happy to be going back to that lovely little village with Lottie; it was so different from the first time. I had only been thirteen back then and Olive only five. It had been scary; we hadn’t known where we were going to end up or what was going to happen to us.
I gazed out the window at the unfamiliar streets and houses. People were going about their Saturday morning business. A woman was pushing a pram along the pavement and a man cycled past on a blue bike. People with lives that I knew nothing about. I looked back at the woman. She was wearing a headscarf, even though the sun was shining and it was warm outside. Perhaps she’d just had her hair done and she was being taken out to dinner by an adoring husband. I smiled to think that she would never know that, for a few seconds, a complete stranger driving past her in a little black car had wondered about her life. We passed bombsites and bombed-out houses. Soon the task of clearing the rubble and rebuilding would start. I wondered if Rannly Court would one day rise out of the ruins.
‘I can’t wait to see Gerraint,’ said Lottie. ‘I mean, I’ve changed, I’ve got taller and so have you. I wonder if he’ll still like me, or will he be disappointed?’
‘How could he be disappointed? You’re gorgeous, you were even gorgeous with the plaits and the glasses. He liked you then so he’s going to adore you now.’
‘You’re right, Nell, we’re both gorgeous. Glengaryth will think that we are visiting movie stars.’
‘Didn’t you see him when you were in Wales with your mum?’
‘No, once we’d been to the ghastly farm and knew you weren’t there, Mum just wanted to come home. It was a long journey and she was keen to make it back to Brighton before dark. It nearly killed me being so close to Glengaryth and not seeing him, but it was so good of Mum to go to Wales in the first place – I didn’t want to push my luck.’
‘It was good of her, wasn’t it? I mean, she didn’t even know me.’
‘I’ve never had a best friend before. I suppose not going to school didn’t help, so when I told Mum how worried I was about you, she was as anxious to find you as I was.’
‘Well, I still think it was lovely of her.’
‘She is lovely. I know she’s my mother and I could be biased but she’s one of the nicest people I know. She can’t wait to see Dad; he’s been entertaining the injured troops up and down the country and he’s coming home next week. We’re having a party – you must all come, Nell, even Auntie Missus.’
‘I’m sure we’d all love to come.’
The journey was long but we had so much to talk about, we didn’t mind. We had picnics on the way and managed to eat almost all the food. We only stopped once more, to fill the car up with petrol.
As the light faded from the sky we reached the Aust ferry that would take us across the river and into Wales. We would soon be in Glengaryth.
Chapter Forty-Eight
It was pitch-black when we arrived at the vicarage. The lights on the little car picked out the old house as we turned into the drive. We got out and I stood there looking up at the two tall chimneys silhouetted against the dark sky. It felt like a lifetime ago that I’d first stood here, a frightened girl, uprooted from all that I knew and loved and put down in this strange country. Me and Olive had been at the mercy of strangers and we had no idea what the future held for us.
Tonight the sky was full of stars and I felt at peace.
‘It feels like a sort of homecoming,’ said Lottie.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’
Just then the door was flung open, shedding a pool of light onto the garden. Auntie Beth came running towards us.
She threw her arms around us both. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said, smiling.
We walked into the kitchen, which was just as I remembered it. The long wooden table, the yellow couch under the window and the huge old fireplace.
My eyes filled with tears as I looked around. ‘I’m so glad that nothing’s changed,’ I said.
‘Oh, Nell,’ she said, taking me in her arms. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you again.’ She looked across at Lottie. ‘And how you’ve both grown.’
‘Where’s the baby?’ I asked.
‘Would you like to see her?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘She’s asleep, but come upstairs.’
The three of us stood gazing down at little Olivia Nell. Her eyes were closed, her dark lashes resting like feathers on two plump cheeks. Every so often her lips moved as if she was telling herself a story. ‘She’s beautiful,’ I whispered.
‘She is, isn’t she?’ said Auntie Beth, smiling fondly down at her baby girl.
Lottie didn’t say much as Auntie Beth and I gazed down into the cot – I got the feeling she wasn’t as captivated as we were.
Uncle Dylan came home later and we spent the evening eating and catching up with each other’s lives. They asked about Mum and Dad and Tony and little Freddie.
‘I don’t know what I would have done if your mother hadn’t turned up when she did. She was a godsend, Nell.’
‘I don’t know what she would have done without you – she wouldn’t have known what to do or where to go.’
‘I was eight months pregnant with Olivia and Dylan was working in Cardiff.’
‘It was such a relief to know that your mother was here, Nell,’ said Uncle Dylan. ‘I tried to get back as much as I could but it wasn’t enough and then your lovely mother and your family arrived. I truly believe that God answered our prayers.’
‘And what about you, Lottie?’ said Auntie Beth. ‘I heard on the grapevine that you had left Eliza Strut’s house.’
‘My mother and I went to family friends in Cornwall. Of course, it was a terrible wrench having to leave the delightful Mrs Strut.’
‘I bet it was,’ said Auntie Beth, giggling.
Even Uncle Dylan was struggling to keep a straight face.
‘She’s a decent God-fearing woman, Lottie,’ he said, ‘and I’m sure that Jesus has reserved a special place for her at God’s table.’
‘As long as she’s not sitting next to me,’ said Lottie.
This time even Dylan was laughing.
The next morning after breakfast, me and Lottie helped Auntie Beth with the washing-up
, then I played with the baby while Lottie went down the garden to pet the horse.
Olivia had just started to sit up but she kept falling back against the cushions and giggling. ‘I’d never get any work done if she was mine, Auntie Beth, she’s just adorable.’
‘Do you know what, Nell? I think you’re too old to be calling us Auntie and Uncle – why don’t you call us Beth and Dylan?’
I’d been sort of thinking the same but I didn’t want to be rude. ‘Okay,’ I said.
‘That’s settled then.’
‘Do you mind if we walk down to the village?’
Beth smiled and put her arm around my shoulder.
‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to have you here again, Nell. I’ve missed you so much. Now, off you go before I get all teary.’
It all felt so familiar as Lottie and I walked side by side through the lanes. We cut across the fields past Dylan’s little chapel and our old school. We stopped and looked at the small square playground.
‘There should be a plaque on the wall that says, “This is where Lottie Lovejoy met Nell Patterson”.’
‘And another one that says, “This is where Olive met Aggie”.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Lottie.
‘It looks smaller than I remember,’ I said.
‘That’s because we’re bigger.’
We left the school behind us and walked down into the village square.
‘Let’s go and surprise Mrs Evans, shall we?’
‘Oh, let’s!’ said Lottie.
We walked across the road to the bakery. Mrs Evans almost vaulted over the counter when she saw us.
‘Oh my word, girls! Is it really you? All grown-up and looking like a pair of models.’
We each gave her a hug – we had grown so tall that she was like a child in our arms.
She dabbed at her eyes. ‘The pair of you are a sight and no mistake; wait till Gerraint sees you. I presume he knows you’re here?’