Unbidden, Anthony laid a hand on her right shoulder, she flinching, not drawing away. Instead, she wondered what was happening to her and what had happened between the two of them. ‘You were pretty boys in those days,’ she said.
The acid all too clear, Pearce didn’t quite know what to do or say, and kept his distance.
Some ten miles to the southwest of the school, Ashby waited by the side of the road in darkness. As the car that had been well behind his climbed into the Brendon Hills, the cone of its headlamps touched the crowns of the trees and he knew for certain he had been followed.
Stepping behind the low stone wall, he watched the car come on to pass by the church, two men in the front, no one in the back, though he couldn’t be certain, the car a Bentley four-door sedan, he thought. They would soon turn about, must have been waiting near the school, probably down by the bridge and near the draw-off to Wetherby Cottage.
Set against the cloud-hidden sky, the crenulated bell tower of the little Norman church was clear enough, the smell of the sea always in these hills. He could even hear the surf pounding in Blue Anchor Bay and off Watchet and Minehead, closer in, the crickets, but by heavens, it was lonely.
As though feeling the road ahead, the Bentley crept back, and when it reached the church, it drew to a stop, he hearing the doors open but not closing.
A torch came on, and from among the tombstones he saw their leather trench coats and fedoras as they eased the gate open and started up the walk.
‘Ach, der Amerikaner ist nicht hier, Kurt. He will have gone back to the coast road.’
A Bavarian, thought Ashby, from Munich probably, a Brown Shirt perhaps, from the early days.
‘Maybe yes, maybe no,’ said the one called Kurt in Deutsch. ‘I still think we will have a look round.’
A Prussian, that one. Touristen, both of them, they having stopped on the walk but now searching the lawn with that light of theirs. They would see where he had walked.
‘Martin, mein Lieber,’ said the one called Kurt, ‘I think I know where that car of his must be.’
Retreating among the tombstones, Ashby tried to recall the layout of the churchyard. He had brought the boys here for a bit of history. Tanner Biggs and Jackie Peterson had made pencil rubbings of some of the inscriptions. A wagon track had wound its way among the canted stones, the ferns and towering oaks and beeches before heading back up to the church and his car. Again and again he watched the beam of that light and tried to remember.
Below the graveyard there had been a fence to keep the cattle out, beyond it, the patchwork fields of the Brendon Hills.
Steps sounded on the gravel. As the two men came together, one lit a cigarette, the other drawing what could only be a Walther P38, the standard issue Polizeipistole.
‘Gott im Himmel, Kurt. Berlin has said no trouble.’
‘Ach, there won’t be any, not when he sees this and feels my hand.’
Together, walking quickly now, they made their way round the far corner, the light soon shining over the MG’s bonnet to momentarily blind him, Ashby switching on the ignition, throwing the car into gear and ramming his foot down on the accelerator, scattering the two of them, the fusillade all too clear.
At Grantley’s, on Sunday, it was Telford who first noticed the boys drifting off after dinner in twos and threes to some secret gathering ground as the rain came down in buckets, sheeting against the leaded glass of the masters’ common room.
‘I say, Banfield, old chap, do you think they’ve got one of the village girls tied to a tree or something? It’s a regular circus!’
‘Has it escaped your notice that I’m reading the Times, Assistant Headmaster?’
‘Best go and find out, I suppose,’ grumbled Telford, but he didn’t. Lowering himself into a chair by the fire, he took up a copy of Country Life and began to browse petulantly, his mind still on the boys. Mischief … they were always up to mischief. Ashby bred that into them. Men like Ashby.
The fire began to smoke—water again, dripping down the chimney. He could hear each drop as old George Crawley, who taught a smattering of the classics, came in with fresh tea, waving pot and sugar bowl at all comers and saying darkly, ‘The boys are up to something.’
Not a head was raised, Telford slapping down his magazine and unfolding himself to suddenly leave.
‘Knew he would chase after them,’ said Banfield, not lifting his eyes from the print. ‘He and Goebbels are past masters at ranting. It seems the Czechs are in for a further mobilization, George. Dr. Goebbels doesn’t think it right; Dr. Telford has to horn in on the poor boys’ scant pleasures.’
‘Tea?’
‘Thanks. Don’t mind if I do. A spot of whisky?’
‘On a day like this?’
The rain poured off the edge of Telford’s umbrella. His gumboots would squelch in the sodding grass, the two old friends standing at the windows watching their colleague until he disappeared from view.
In time Telford reached the glade, but all he found was a sharpened stake planted nakedly upright in the rain and a scattering of rinds, the flesh and seeds. Odd that, melons. Definitely out of season. Peterson … It would have to have been Peterson in the Lower Fifth. His father owned that beastly hotel in Blackpool where he had stayed last summer thinking he would get a good rate. Overcharged, that’s what they had done to him. No sense of loyalty these days. None at all.
Now what the devil had happened here and why were the boys all so interested in it?
Up a rise, huddled amongst the bracken, that wretched boy Hamilton was watching him, and Finch … yes, Thomas Barclay Finch was there, too, both with pneumonia in the offing.
There’s mischief here, thought Telford, but the heavens opened, the black cloth of his umbrella threatening to burst.
Ashby … It had to have had something to do with Ashby’s having left the school again like a bolt of lightning.
Late on that Sunday, the car limped over the last of the heights and started down towards the sea. In the distance, Saint Ives clung to the shore, while all along the horizon the turbulent lead-grey clouds still sheeted out of the southwest.
Ashby drew off to the side of the road for a moment. He hadn’t slept, hadn’t shaved. Though the shops had been closed in Truro, he had, by banging on a back door, managed a pair of silver earrings and a charm bracelet, but those two with the Polizeipistole wouldn’t stop. If they would wait for him outside the school, they would track him down here. The rocky cliffs and hidden coves of Cornwall had drawn him many times in the past, he automatically thinking of bringing her here, but then, too, Ewen and Monica had been living in Saint Ives and that had been handy. People he could trust to look after her, though they had refused any compensation.
It should have worked. It had every right to have done, but now fear plucked at him. Again he glanced behind. The road was narrow and winding, thrust between low stone walls of slate and turf overgrown with mosses and bordered by windswept fields, the gorse in bloom, the smell of it mingling with that of the sea.
Gulls rode the eddies inland. A cluster of ravens clung to the stunted whin, reminding him of the war, the ravens winging silently through the fog to alight on the tangled skeins of barbed wire that had made their nests before the broken trenches.
All too soon he was among the narrow, climbing streets and lanes, the quaint stone cottages that the artists had taken over as the fishermen had passed away. The years hadn’t been kind, and with the decline of the fishing and the loss of the tin mines, Saint Ives had accepted artists and tourists alike as it had accepted poets and writers before them.
Everything, however, overlooked the harbour, where there was a wonderful sandy beach she would have loved. The parish church, Saint Ida’s, dated from the fifteenth century. Several shops, a good lending library and a cinema offered diversion. There was even a choice of schools. She would have been happy
once she had got used to the place.
He knew it had been too much to expect, yet didn’t quite know what he could do about it, especially in the short term.
Monica MacDonald told him where she was, and he started off right away. Alone, Karen was standing at the very end of the quay, watching the tide go out as some of the sailboats and fishing smacks settled themselves on the bottom. The wind played havoc with her fair hair and made the light-blue dress flutter and cling to her slightly parted legs.
She didn’t look his way when he called out, wouldn’t turn, he saying, ‘Liebling, ich bins.’ It’s me.
There was no answer. Again using Deutsch, he said, ‘Look, I know you wanted to be with me, but I couldn’t take you to the school. There’s only a room. It’s not as if they have extra space.’
‘They wouldn’t understand, would they, Vati? They would think I was someone else’s daughter.’
‘How have things been?’ he asked, feeling futile.
‘Fine. They are fine.’
‘Then why won’t you look at me?’
‘When I am ready. When you have been punished enough. Vati, I don’t like it here. I want to go home.’
‘Liebling, you can’t. Those people are crazy. You know that as well as I. We discussed it.’
‘Die Nazis, Vati? Das Volk?’
The people … ‘Karen, I need you. I want us to be together.’
She flung herself at him and he held her close. She was only seven, and he knew she was terribly frightened and very confused, for her life had been turned upside down, but when they got back to the house, Ewen MacDonald didn’t hesitate. ‘Och, it’s na every day a father kidnaps his bairn, David. The lass is rightfully upset and you had best come t’ grips wi’ it. She needs her mother.’
‘Ewen, please don’ shout,’ urged Monica.
‘Kidnapped?’ arched Ashby. ‘Two years ago Christina and that father of hers stopped me from seeing my own daughter, Ewen. What else was I to have done?’
‘Och, I know, Dave, but you canna fight nature,’ said Ewen. ‘Karen will na forget Christina and neither will that wife of yours forget Karen. You’re the sore tooth. At least let her telephone her mother.’
‘After what happened to me on the way here? Ewen, she’ll have to be kept indoors until I can find another place.’
Stubborn, why th’ bloody hell did David Ashby have t’ be so stubborn? Abruptly MacDonald got up from the kitchen table, Monica turning away to fetch the tea and keep out of things. A drawer was soon slammed in the sitting room. A dozen letters, all in their envelopes and ready for the post, were tossed onto the table.
‘We’re aching, laddie,’ said MacDonald. ‘Aching like that wee girl you’ve caused us t’ lie to. Och, aye, she’s crept inta our hearts and we’d na like t’ see her leave, but would will away Creation if it’d help.’
‘Sit down, Ewen, please,’ said Ashby. ‘Monica, what about that tea?’
MacDonald glanced at his wife and saw her nod. Ashby picked up the letters and read the address: ‘Fräulein Christina von Hoffmann.’ Fräulein, not Frau, Ashby.
‘All right, I’ll telephone Christina when I get back to the school, and I’ll try to talk some sense into her.’
‘The child, David,’ said MacDonald. ‘Tell th’ wee thing you’ll take her home. It’s what she wants.’
‘I can’t, Ewen, knowing what I do of what’s been going on in the Reich.’
Monica slipped the cosy over the pot and glanced out the window. Karen was ignoring the cat she had so readily befriended and had allowed to sleep on her bed ever since. ‘Put the letters away, David,’ she said. ‘Practice forgery if you must, but somehow answer them.’
The tea helped. There were scones too, and a bit of cheese to tide him over. For several minutes he made no further attempt to tell them what had really happened in the graveyard or why, again, he couldn’t take Karen to the Reich. They were trying to understand, but what he’d done had defied everything by which they lived. Both wanted children of their own; both were from Inverness, Ewen, thirty-eight, Monica a year younger. She had been helping out at her father’s guesthouse three summers ago when he’d chatted her up and tried to get her to go out. ‘Oh, and aye, I would,’ she had said, ‘but there’s someone you’d na want a rumble with.’
Ewen hadn’t changed. Unlike Monica, he should have been born three hundred years ago.
‘You’re quiet,’ said Ashby, looking up to see those lovely brown eyes watching him. ‘Are you angry with me too?’
The long auburn hair had been braided into a rope that hung forwards over her right shoulder. Fingering the tea cosy, she glanced at Ewen for reassurance, then came to a decision of her own. ‘David, she cries herself t’ sleep and … Och, I canna speak the language, can I? Karen needs someone who can … someone younger than m’self if she’s ever to cope wi’ this.’
‘Won’t the other children play with her?’
Ewen let impatience get the better of him but she stilled him with a glance and said, ‘It’s her accent, the few words of English she knows. They think she’s different, and they hear their parents talking of war. You know what children are like. Och, I’ve told her t’ pay them no mind, but it’s hard labour when you’re young and in a strange place. I was thinking … There’s a girl comes into town who speaks German. She might …’
‘Is she German?’ demanded Ashby.
Why hadn’t he just said, Damn you? ‘She isn’t, and you mustn’t hate them.’
‘I don’t. I just don’t want her growing up among them, not now.’
‘The girl speaks the language and very well, I think,’ said Monica. ‘Don’ ask me why or how Mrs. Carne down at the post found out. I suspect a tourist came in asking t’ mail something, and the girl just happened t’ be there t’ translate. She’s …’
It was Ewen who said, ‘David, don’ be daft. The girl canna be working for th’ Boches. They would have taken Karen by now.’
Still the thought wouldn’t leave him. ‘Where can I find her?’
Instinctively Monica laid a hand over his. She didn’t answer for a moment, and Ewen didn’t intrude. ‘She’s up in tha’ old stone cottage of Blind William’s.’
Ever since she had met the girl, Monica had known she would have to tell him. David and she had gone there once, alone. After Blind William had passed away, the cottage had been left empty. Ewen had been off to the Continent in the trawler, David having come down unexpectedly. Nothing had happened. Nothing, but Ewen still wondered. ‘David, the girl shouldna keep t’ herself in tha’ place. Karen would like her. They’d get on. Och, I know they would.’
The cottage, of grey granite, was as Ashby remembered—one room with a flagstone floor, a plain wooden door, but newly painted white, as was the trim. Tucked into a fold in the land, a half mile from the road, it was below the crest of a gentle rise and back of cliffs that fell more than three hundred feet. Sweeping views of the sea were everywhere, while out over the moor, the gusting storm track sent ripples through the grass, the heather and the gorse to the top of a distant hill and the tall, stone chimney and forbidding ruins of an old tin mine.
There was a bicycle leaning against the cottage. Ashby let himself in at the gate in the turf-covered stone wall and, reaching the door at last, knocked quickly, wanting suddenly to get the whole business over.
There was no answer. He knocked again and then again. Going round the side, he gave a timid hello to the barren, weather-beaten privy from which no answer came.
She was down near the base of the cliffs, rooting about in an old boat shed among the overturned pilchard baskets and the forgotten nets. There was a clinker-built lifeboat just beyond her, and he had the idea that she was making her way towards it, but must have heard him, for she swung round and gave a startled gasp as he asked, ‘Hilary?’
Warily she said, ‘Yes, that�
��s me.’
‘My name’s Ashby. Can we talk?’
Light from a gap in the floor of the loft above fell on her, but it wasn’t much. Still wary, she seemed unable to answer, and he wondered then if she was afraid of being found out, but couldn’t put a finger to that either.
Under an open dark-grey suit jacket, she wore a plain white shirt-blouse paired with grey trousers, the dark auburn hair cut short, parted high on the left and feathered back to curl behind the ears in a style reminiscent of the 1920s, and as he came on into the boat shed, she must have seen that she had no reason to fear him, for she said, ‘Oh, sorry. I thought you were from … Well, it doesn’t matter. What can I do for you, Mr. … ?’
‘Ashby, David.’
Her dark brown eyes gave him the once-over, she waiting for him to tell her more.
‘Sprechen sie Deutsch?’ he asked.
‘Und Französisch, Herr Ashby, but why do you ask? You’re not one of them, are you?’
This last had been said with dismay, as if she had decided to accept him and was now angry with herself for having made too hasty a judgement.
‘One of whom?’ he asked in Deutsch.
‘Ach, was zum Teufel wollen Sie?’ What the hell do you want? ‘The roof obviously needs repair,’ she went on. ‘The boat’s had it—I’m sure it has. There’s not a bloody thing worth selling in the place!’
‘That boat’s as sound as the day it was launched. The nets do need mending. There are lobster traps in the loft, if you’d care to take a look, or did some needy soul borrow them?’
Throwing him a curious look, she said suspiciously, ‘You’ve been here before.’
Ashby found himself looking at her more closely until, at last, he answered simply, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.’
‘You’re not the one with the little girl, are you?’
‘Yes, but how did you …’
‘There’s talk. There always is in a small town like Saint Ives. Since I’m a part of that talk, I listen when I can. She’s very pretty but terribly out of place and lonely. Did her mother die?’
The Sleeper Page 2