The Girl on the Beach

by Mary Nichols

  ‘Did you forget what had happened in between? About me and Alec and the air force?’

  ‘For a little while, yes. I was terribly confused and began to doubt my sanity. I denied being Eve Seaton; the only thought in my head as I walked away from that carnage – it was awful, Florrie, truly awful – was finding my baby. I only really accepted what had happened when I got to Bermondsey and saw the house had gone and was told George had died …’

  ‘My God, what a tale! What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what this will do to Alec. You’ll have to find your husband and divorce him.’

  ‘On what grounds? He didn’t desert me – I left him, not voluntarily, but I did. I’m the guilty party and perhaps he won’t want to divorce me. People look down their noses at anyone who’s divorced, and I don’t know what his parents will say.’

  ‘You won’t find out unless you ask him.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can.’

  ‘Eve!’

  ‘I loved Harry, Florrie. He was everything to me, my childhood sweetheart, the father of my baby. I can’t just pretend that never happened. When I see him again, who knows how I’ll feel? Or how he’ll feel?’

  ‘Did you tell Murray all this?’

  ‘Yes. In any case, she knew Eve Seaton was a made-up name, it’s on my medical records.’

  ‘So? Are you Julie Walker or Eve Seaton?’

  ‘I’m Eve Seaton. It’s the name I’m registered with and it’s on all my documentation. Unless I do something official, like changing it back by deed poll, that’s the way it stays.’

  ‘There you are, then. Stay Eve Seaton.’

  ‘That doesn’t change the fact that I have a husband. The section officer is going to ask the station commander if he can find out where he is.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Murray insists on me going to Oxford, whether I like it or not, so whatever I do will have to wait until they let me go. I don’t know what they can tell me I don’t already know, so I don’t suppose I’ll be there long.’

  ‘What a mess!’

  ‘I know. Please don’t say anything to Alec yet.’

  ‘I’m not likely to do that while he’s in the thick of the fighting, it could make him careless and cost him his life. But the minute he gets leave he’ll be home, and you had better have it sorted out by then.’ It sounded like a threat.

  The artillery bombardment of Caen had been going on for days and the noise was deafening as shell after shell exploded on the city, which was being defended by Rommel’s panzers and, according to rumour, they had been ordered to defend it to the last man. Alec began to wonder if anything would be left standing at the end of it. The city, one of the largest in Normandy, was of strategic importance to both sides, being a centre of communications, and until it was captured the Allied armies could not move forward. It was supposed to have been taken on D-Day itself, so they heard, but here they were in July and the Germans were still holding out. No one among the planners and strategists had realised it would take so long. According to the vociferous Trooper Langford, they should have been halfway to Paris by now.

  Alec and his men had arrived back at their unit ten days after being parachuted in. Coming as they had from German-occupied country, they had been subjected to fierce rifle fire from their compatriots and had been obliged to dive for cover. After all they had been through, it seemed like the last straw.

  ‘Hey, give over, you lot,’ Langford had yelled at them. ‘We’re not bloody Jerries.’

  ‘How do we know that?’ a voice answered. ‘Identify yourselves.’

  ‘We will if you hold your fire,’ Alec had shouted. ‘We’re coming out now.’

  They got up gingerly and walked, with hands raised, down the road towards a group of British soldiers manning a roadblock, who pointed their rifles at them, looking as if they would not need much temptation to fire. Alec had convinced them who they were, aided by a string of expletives from Langford who took their cool reception as a personal slight.

  ‘Where can I find Colonel Luard?’ Alec had asked the corporal in charge when the rifles had been lowered and they had all shaken hands.

  ‘As far as I know he’s at the brickworks.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘At Le Mesnil. It’s on the outskirts of Caen.’

  ‘Is that in our hands?’

  ‘No, but not for want of trying. We’ve had three goes at taking it and each time had to withdraw.’ He had pointed up the road and given him directions, ending, ‘Be careful, there’s still snipers about. They creep through the lines at night and shoot anything that moves in daylight.’

  Le Mesnil was a small hamlet which housed kilns making roofing tiles, but it was known among the troops as ‘the brickworks’. Here they found the survivors of their battalion ensconced. The colonel’s greeting on seeing the exhausted band of paratroopers had been, ‘Where the hell have you been, Sergeant?’

  Alec had grinned and given an account of what had happened to them, and been questioned about enemy troops – where they were, and in what numbers – which he had answered as well as he could. It was from the colonel he learnt that General Montgomery had decided trying to take Caen was costing too many lives and it would be better to outflank it and occupy Villers-Bocage, a few miles to the south-west and in the line of the American advance from the Cherbourg Peninsula. They had been driven back by SS tanks. ‘I’ve no doubt Caen will be on the cards again before long,’ he was told. ‘Get your heads down for an hour or two, then report for duty. You are going to be needed.’

  His stick had rejoined the rest of the company, who were tired, disgruntled and frustrated at their lack of progress. The Germans were only on the other side of a field and everyone had to be vigilant, and every night the two sides sent mortar bombs into each other’s positions, which kept everyone’s heads down. One night was particularly severe. They were subjected to a devastating barrage of shells and mortars which began at eleven in the evening and went on for several hours. The casualties were horrendous and the stretcher parties braved the hail to bring them in and, after preliminary treatment at the Regimental Aid Post, they were sent by road to Ranville. It was the first time Alec had seen any real action, and watching friends and comrades being maimed or killed and knowing he could be next was a terrifying experience, shared by everyone, which they all felt deeply but kept hidden with silly jokes and grim determination. Next day they had been sent back behind the lines. Their relief in the shape of the 51st Highlanders had arrived and many thought they would be going home to England. After all, they were specialist troops and were not expected to stay with the invasion force.

  In that they were disappointed. They hadn’t gone home, simply to the banks of the Orne, but it gave them a little respite; they were able to sleep undisturbed at night, take a shower and go to the little cinema in Luc-sur-Mer, which had been taken over by ENSA and was where Charlie Chester entertained them with the Stars in Battledress. But best of all, Alec was able to write to Eve. He said nothing of the terrible scenes he had witnessed but tried to be optimistic about their future together. It was thinking of her, so sweet and clean, that kept him from dwelling on the horrors.

  Their rest ended all too soon and they returned to Le Mesnil to more of the same.

  Now the Allies were going to try once again to take Caen. The RAF had been bombing the town all night and the battleship Rodney, out in the Channel, had bombarded it with hundreds of sixteen-inch shells. The men knew that when the bombardment stopped they would have to move out of the shelter of their foxholes and bunkers and advance. The Germans knew it too and would be ready for them.

  The guns suddenly stopped and there was an eerie silence, followed by a whistle and shouted commands. In a second Alec was up and running, dodging this way and that, his heart pumping as the heavy guns were replaced by small-arms fire. He was leading his men into the city itself. It had been devastat
ed by Allied bombing and was in ruins. Rifles at the ready, they ran down what had once been a quiet residential street, dodging into doorways, taking shelter behind broken walls to return the fire of the defenders, before running on again. They had almost reached the River Orne, which dissected the town, and Alec was charging through someone’s garden when he felt something hit his shoulder hard enough to knock him backwards. The attack continued over his inert body.

  * * *

  ‘You remember that oily little man we met in London when we were looking for Rosie?’ Stuart Summers said to his wife. Her dark hair was streaked with grey and she was too thin, but she was looking a little more like her old self since they had stopped their fruitless search and agreed that Rosie must have died. The service in the kirk had helped her to come to terms with that. Now this. He wondered whether to keep it from her but decided she had to be told.

  She dropped the newspaper she had been reading, pulled her glasses down to the end of her nose and looked at him over the top of them. ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s written to say he knows what happened to her.’

  ‘Oh, what does he say? Let me see.’ She held out her hand for the missive.

  It was frustratingly short. ‘You will be pleased to hear that I have continued my enquiries on your behalf and have discovered why your daughter disappeared. I remember you offered a reward for information, and as the search has been prolonged and cost me dear in time and money, I would appreciate recompense. A postal order for fifty pounds sent to the address at the top of this letter will find me more than willing to tell you all I know.’

  ‘He’s having us on,’ he said when she returned it to him. ‘He’ll cash the postal order and disappear.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ she said. ‘It might be genuine.’

  ‘Only one way to find out and that’s to go and see him and get the information out of him before we part with a penny. We’ll go down this weekend.’

  If Ted expected to have a postal order drop through his letter box by return of post, he was disappointed. After seeing Julie, it had taken him ten days of feverish searching to find the calling card Stuart Summers had given him. He had turned the house upside down, gone through all the drawers and cupboards, even those he had not touched since moving in, but the card could not be found. Of all the possible plans of action, he had decided to try the Summers first as being the most likely to cough up. He didn’t know where Harry Walker was and it might be difficult to find him without going through official channels, and what reason could he give for wanting to know? He could ask the man’s parents, old man Walker could be contacted at the Chalfont factory in Letchworth, but they would also want to know why he wanted to know. He could tell them, but he didn’t want to lose the comfort of the Walkers’ Islington house, which he had come to look on as home. He got on well with the neighbours, who had been led to believe he was a hard-working businessman who was reluctantly not fit for active service. Contacting the Walkers might put that at risk.

  If he told the Summers what had happened, they would undoubtedly chase Walker up themselves and that would put the cat among the pigeons. The trouble was he hadn’t been able to find that damned calling card. It had turned up in the end, just when he’d given up, caught in the lining of the jacket he’d been wearing at the time. He was much too fussy to wear clothes that had seen better days and it had hung in the wardrobe unworn. What made him feel in the pocket he didn’t know, but there it was, gone through into the lining. He had pulled it out with a yell of triumph and lost no time writing his letter. And still he was frustrated because they didn’t answer it.

  The reason became obvious the following Saturday when they arrived on the doorstep. He was taken aback at first, but swiftly recovered himself and invited them in. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit untidy,’ he said, leading them into the sitting room. There were stacks of books, papers and boxes all over the floor, where he had been searching for the card and not bothered to put everything away again. He swept his jacket off the sofa and invited them to sit. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ he queried. ‘Or something stronger?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you,’ Angela said primly, though she did sit down. Her husband did not. He stood and faced Ted squarely.

  ‘I think you know why we are here.’

  ‘I assume it is in response to my letter. I thought you might be pleased to know the truth, even if it is not what you want to hear.’

  ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘You forget, sir, that I am a freelance and earn my money by helping people in any way I can. I am afraid I cannot work for nothing, not even in such a good cause. I was fond of Rosie too, you know.’

  Stuart withdrew his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket, but he did not open it. ‘Information, Mr Austen, and then we will negotiate payment depending on what you tell us.’

  ‘I’ll do more than that, I’ll show you, if you care to take a walk.’

  ‘You mean she’s living close by?’ Angela said, unable to keep the excitement from her voice.

  ‘Living close by? No, I can’t say that,’ he said, allowing himself a faint smile. ‘Come, I’ll show you.’

  He took them to Highgate Cemetery and pointed to a grave. ‘The answer’s there.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Angela said, looking down at the grave. It was not a new one, but it was well tended and there was a vase of flowers and a damaged garden gnome on it. The name wasn’t Rosie’s, though. ‘What has Julie Walker to do with our daughter?’

  ‘Rosie’s in that grave,’ Ted said. ‘She and Julie were friends. Rosie was looking after Julie’s baby and was in the shelter with him when the house was bombed. They died together. Everyone thought she was Julie.’

  ‘How can such a thing have happened?’ Stuart asked, disinclined to believe the man. ‘Surely someone knew she wasn’t Julie?’

  ‘Undoubtedly they did, but it was convenient to keep mum about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Harry was away in Canada and while the cat’s away the mice will play. Julie found herself another love and jumped at the chance to disappear. And the Walkers never took to her, so they let it ride.’

  ‘That’s too fantastic to believe,’ Stuart said furiously. ‘If you think I’m going to pay you good money for that so-called information, then you’ll have to think again.’

  Ted grinned. ‘No doubt you require proof. Would a living breathing Julie Walker convince you?’

  ‘You know where she is?’

  ‘Not precisely at this moment, but I’ve seen her recently and confronted her so I know what I’m saying is true. I’ll find her again and bring her to see you, shall I?’ He already knew what she was calling herself; the name had been stencilled in the flap of her rucksack and he had managed to open it enough to read it when he took the bag from her at the café. He had followed her from there, more cautiously this time, and seen her speaking to another WAAF at Waterloo Station. He’d hopped on the train behind them and kept an eye on them all the way to Ramsgate. He had yet to confirm that she was stationed at Manston but he’d take an even bet that she was. Whether he passed on the information depended on what he could milk out of the Summers and what other opportunities presented themselves. It really wasn’t the Summers he was after, but getting revenge for the humiliation he had endured at the hands of Harry Walker. He didn’t care how he did it.

  ‘You do that,’ Stuart said. ‘Not a penny will you get until you do.’

  ‘I have expenses, Mr Summers. People who furnish me with information require payment.’

  Stuart gave him a grim smile. ‘As you do.’

  ‘As I do,’ Ted acknowledged. ‘Money talks.’

  Stuart extracted two five-pound notes from his wallet and handed them to Ted, who looked at the white sheets briefly as if to check they were what they purported to be, then crumpled them into his pocket. ‘I will be in touch again, Mr Summers, and if I were you, I should begin to think what you want done about the situation. You can’t leave you
r daughter in the wrong grave, can you?’ And with that he turned on his heel and left them standing.

  They watched him go, then turned back to look at the grave with its simple inscription. ‘Do you think it’s true?’ she whispered. ‘Is Rosie really there?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘I’m not waiting for that scallywag to find Julie Walker, if he ever intends to. If she and the baby were buried while Harry Walker was away, someone must have identified the bodies and arranged the funeral, and my guess is that it was his father. We’ll go and see him tomorrow, see what he has to say.’

  * * *

  Donald and Hilda were walking home from church where they had prayed for all those caught up in the war: for those in France battling it out for the liberation of Caen still holding out weeks after the invasion; for the troops in Italy, making their way northwards against stiff resistance, even though the Italians had changed sides; for those in the Far East fighting the Japanese; for those risking their lives on the high seas and in the air. They had prayed for civilians caught up in the latest attack on London by flying bombs. Here, in Letchworth, they felt comparatively safe, although one of the buzz bombs had reached Ashwell, the other side of Baldock, not many miles away. They were talking about it as they walked.

  Approaching the garden gate of the semi-detached villa they were renting in Norton Road, they were surprised to see Mr and Mrs Summers standing on the step.

  ‘We’re sorry to intrude on your Sunday,’ Stuart said. ‘But we felt we had to see you.’

  ‘Not at all. Do come in.’ Donald unlocked the door and ushered them ahead of him. The smell of slow-roasting beef came to them from the kitchen. Hilda hurried off to check on it and put the kettle on to offer them a hot drink, while Donald took them into the sitting room and bade them be seated. ‘Sherry?’ he queried holding up a decanter. ‘I’ve nothing else to offer you, I’m afraid.’