‘So whose idea was this?’ John asked quietly.
Simon embarked on the wearisome business of weaving lies in as few words as possible. ‘The new regulation concerns all British beaches in the south, from the Thames to Wales.’
Eyes narrowed, John watched Simon sceptically. ‘When is this supposed to happen?’
‘Within thirty days,’ Simon answered.
‘What has it got to do with me?’
‘Nothing really, I was warning you. You may have to reschedule your early morning rides. D’you think the locals will be up in arms?’
‘Some of them might be’ John said as if bored by the conversation. ‘But most of us have a great deal to put up with. Some have been bombed out and lost almost all they own. They spend their nights in damp shelters in their gardens, most of which flood every winter, and almost every family has relatives in the armed forces. They don’t know if they’ll ever see them again . . . but the Yanks are here and Poles and Commonwealth forces from all over the world, many of whom have volunteered to come over to help beat the Nazis. I think we would put up with any damn thing that might help the Allies train . . . in other words, help them win the war.’
Christ! He’s right! Simon thought. This sib is wide off the mark. Perhaps he had overestimated the PWE guys’ expertise.
‘I get your point,’ he said quietly.
‘That’s it!’
‘I guess so.’
‘Well, I want to air a few things, too, since we’re here. Let’s have this conversation Yankee style, shall we? Don’t you guys believe in having it out?’
‘Of course,’ Simon said, feeling uneasy.
‘I know you’re after my daughter and I want you to know that I strenuously disapprove. If you had any morals at all you would not take advantage of your position as our uninvited guest.’
‘That’s a little harsh,’ Simon countered. ‘Did you expect me to be unaware of your daughter’s beauty?’
‘No, but I didn’t expect you to move in quite so fast.’
Simon wanted to rebuff the accusation. He had another perfectly valid reason for moving into John’s house, but he was unable to voice it. And if he were completely honest he would admit that he was very anxious to get out of that draughty tent on that damned soggy field. The truth was he had been utterly floored by Helen’s incredible looks and he had looked forward to seeing her on a daily basis.
He said, ‘It’s difficult to ignore the appeal of someone so beautiful, but at the same time one is very aware that the person concerned didn’t earn it. It is a gift of nature, but Helen herself is as lovely as her looks. That’s what really counts, isn’t it? She’s loyal, brave, kind, resourceful, a wonderful mother, generous and self-sacrificing and plenty more besides, although I must admit, I find her hard to get on with.’
‘Plus she’s lonely and heartbroken,’ John added. ‘She married Eric at eighteen. I tried to stop her but she was determined and so was he. He was too old for her, but still youngish, and dashing, life and soul of the party type. What could be more romantic than a commander in the navy. I did my best to stop them from marrying, but I failed. Helen was training to be a dress designer, but she was amazingly successful right from the start. One dress made the front cover of Vogue, but after Daisy was born, Eric insisted that she give up her career. He had umpteen dozen affairs and finally he left her with nothing.’
‘Apart from a very lovely daughter.’
‘Well yes, that goes without saying.’ John was sipping his warm, draught bitter and pushing the crisps into his mouth while gazing at the flames in the hearth. ‘I’m well aware of the effect Helen’s beauty would have on someone like you,’ he said quietly. ‘My wife, Mia, was very beautiful . . . same eyes, but she had ash blonde hair. She was Danish. I met her on a sales tour to Denmark.’
‘Doesn’t your own experience tell you something?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘You wouldn’t give Mia up without a good try. Maybe there are others like you.’
John sat silently glowering at him, so Simon stood up to replenish their drinks.
By the time he returned, John had become even more hostile. ‘You’re a typical lawyer, Simon. You know all about us, but we don’t know a damn thing about you.’
‘Well, I can tell you whatever you want to know. Father was a lawyer. He owned a large and successful country firm of solicitors in a town near Seattle. I was supposed to join him, but I wanted to strike out on my own, so I specialized in human rights and joined a Manhattan firm. I moved twice to similar firms in New York and finally became a partner. Then came the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, so I joined up. It seemed the right thing to do at the time.’
‘Why do I have the impression that you’re leaving out all the important parts?’
Simon shrugged.
‘Are you married?’
‘Yes,’ Simon said, sticking strictly to the truth and reasoning that further explanations were unnecessary.
John brightened visibly. Then Simon cottoned on. John didn’t want to lose his family by having them marry Americans and leave England. Hence his antipathy.
Munching his chips, John remained gazing at the fire with a far away look in his eyes. Perhaps he was thinking of his late wife. Simon decided not to tell him that his divorce would soon be final. Why spoil his evening?
‘I’ve noticed you down in the bay with a group of GIs. You seem to be in charge of them,’ John continued.
‘That’s right. I’m an underwater diving instructor.’
‘Pull the other leg,’ John said scathingly. ‘Most of the time, you’re in London. Strange place for a diving instructor. You never open your mouth without carefully working out exactly what you’re going to say, yet you told me about the beaches being closed and made out it was some kind of a secret. Now why did you do that?’
‘Well, it is not really a long-term secret, is it? The news will break within thirty days.’
‘You had your reasons for telling me and I think I’ve worked out exactly what that was.’
For a few moments the two men stared at each other. ‘It’s classified,’ Simon said firmly. That was a good stopper to the conversation.
John continued gazing into the fire, as if dreaming, but his keen mind was hard at work. He’s no ordinary soldier, not even for a captain, he said to himself. The guys seem to treat him with a great deal of respect. He’s always moving around England, visiting other camps and he spends half his time in London. Why? John suddenly remembered reading somewhere that the pick of the lawyers who had volunteered were being drafted into military intelligence. Furthermore he had told John that he felt the cold after six months in South America. Yet this evening he claimed to have joined up right after Pearl Harbour. There are no US troops in Argentina, which meant that he was working undercover for military intelligence.
John felt pleased with his deduction. They seemed to have run out of conversation, so they eyed each other malevolently for a while, before opting to walk home.
‘By the way,’ John said, as they reached Conroy House. ‘I was in intelligence in the last war, so we have something in common after all. I must tell you that I was a damn sight more sly than you are. Perhaps you should stick to scuba diving. I won’t be passing on your sib for you. It’s too bloody silly for words, but don’t worry. I won’t interfere with whatever it is you are up to.’
One down, three to go, Simon comforted himself as he fought to recover his composure.
Sixteen
Mowbray sat huddled beside the sea, shrouded in total blackout, but even this had its compensations, John Cooper thought, as he slid the bolts across the stable doors and walked slowly back to the house. Without the multitude of lights of prewar days the stars seemed brighter, lighting his way across the cobbled yard to the back door. En-route he enjoyed the evanescent gleams of phosphorescence on the sea which brought back memories of midnight summer romancing down in their secluded bay when he and Mia returned to Engl
and. His wife had never felt the cold and he had suffered in silence. Those were the days. He breathed in deeply, enjoying the peaceful night and the scent of ozone which he loved.
An owl screeched, a dog barked from the next street and he could hear the sound of a distant aircraft. Not one of ours surely, and more than one, he realized with a jolt of unease. He stood listening, watching the eastern horizon, wondering if the enemy bombers were fleeing the spitfires or simply running off course. The siren’s sudden, monotonous dirge sent him sprinting to the back door that led into the scullery. Closing it behind him, he pulled the heavy curtain across the door before switching on the light. The house was in darkness, but he could hear the radio in the living room. ‘Dick Barton, special agent in No Place to Hide,’ he heard the announcer’s macabre voice. This was the kids’ favourite programme, so where were they?
‘Where is everyone?’ he shouted.
‘In here. Don’t put the light on,’ Helen called.
Daisy was half out of the window with Miro close beside her, as usual. Helen stood by the closed window staring at the sky, frowning. She was deeply afraid of the raids and not without reason. She had never told him this, but he knew from the way she bit her bottom lip and played with her fingers, trying to knit them together over and over again.
The light was off so that the family could hang out of the window letting icy blasts into their warm room. ‘It’s three degrees outside. It will soon be the same in here,’ he grumbled.
Daisy turned from the window. ‘Enemy bombers,’ she called out. ‘That’s strange. What are they doing here?’
‘They might be our bombers setting out for their nightly raid. I bet you can’t tell the difference,’ John said.
‘Of course I can. There’s no mistaking the sound. Enemy bombers make a deep low-pitched rumble in stops and starts. Our planes have a lighter, steadier drone.’
‘You should know,’ he acknowledged. John would never forgive Eric for dragging his daughter and her children to every blitz area. They should have been here, or in Wales at the very least. Just look at Helen twisting her fingers into knots. God knows how she had survived the Dover shelling and the time bomb on their house, followed by the Plymouth and Southampton blitzes. When he’d gathered them up and brought them home, they’d possessed little more than what they stood up in, but they were alive and that was all that counted.
‘Come inside and shut the window, Daisy please, before we freeze to death,’ Helen called. ‘You two should get under the stairs and hurry up. The planes are getting too close.’
‘And you, Mum?’ Daisy sounded nervous.
‘Yes, all right. I’ll look around first.’
‘There’s nothing to bomb here,’ John said.
John joined Helen at the window. The planes were moving closer, but several fighter aircraft were zooming into the attack. By now the sky was lit by searchlights swinging from side to side, criss-crossing as the gunners searched for their targets. A searchlight caught a plane in its beam and immediately hung in there. It looked more like an iridescent silver moth zooming around a lamp. More beams raced across the sky to pinpoint the moth, who was trying its best to evade the searchlights. Puffs of exploded shells hung in the beams. A sudden flare showed the moth’s demise. As the enemy plane spiraled to the ground the searchlights resumed their swinging search.
‘One down. I think it crashed into the New Forest. They’re way off course if they’re after the docks,’ John said, pulling down the blackout blinds and drawing the heavily-lined curtains.
A mattress, pillows, blankets, a milk churn of fresh water, biscuits and paper cups were kept under the stairs and replenished daily. In summer, they went to their Anderson shelter which was dug into the garden, but it flooded every winter. Knees hunched up, the family sat in a row, leaning against their pillows which were placed against the wall, listening to the shriek of shells and the drone of heavily laden enemy bombers circling overhead. The rat-a-tat-tat of ack-ack guns and a few exploding bombs sounded muffled and distant.
‘Sounds like they’re bombing the New Forest. The trees deaden the sound. It must be a mistake,’ John muttered. ‘Perhaps they’re lost.’
Miro’s anger burned like acid in his chest. He couldn’t stand to sit a moment longer. He muttered, ‘I’m going to check the stables,’ and scrambled to his feet, running to the front door and slamming it behind him. The sky was alight with thousands of burning incendiaries falling to earth. It was beautiful, macabre and deadly. Most were red, but some were blue. The blue ones carried explosives, he knew, while the red ones merely set light to whatever was flammable, and most of Southampton was, he remembered. So was this old house. There was a hissing sound as one landed nearby. ‘Where’s a spade?’ he muttered. He ran to the shed, but he couldn’t see a thing. Fumbling along the row of hanging tools in total darkness, he felt for the spade, hauled it off the hook and ran back to shovel earth over the incendiary. It sizzled and went out. Another two landed nearby. Miro upturned the dustbin on one of them, and piled earth on the other. But what about the roof? He wouldn’t see the blaze from ground level. The house would burn down before they knew what was happening. One of the attic windows led out on to a ledge, he knew, and from there he could climb up and put out any small blaze with a fire extinguisher. Grabbing a torch and the fire extinguisher from the scullery, he raced up four flights to the attic. As he had thought, it was simple to get out on to the roof, and so far there were no firebombs.
He sat there and watched the show. If you weren’t afraid of who would die and whether or not the house was going to be bombed, this was a show to rival all others, far better than any fireworks.
They used to have great displays back home. He remembered when the news first came of Germany’s right to accede Sudetenland, right after the Munich Conference. The celebrations had gone on for days: fireworks, singing, marches, all night dancing, his friends dizzy with beer and joy, his parents staying alone at home, wondering what it would mean for them. Miro had sat at the attic window obsessed with a feeling of isolation. He didn’t seem to belong anywhere. Funnily enough he no longer felt isolated and Daisy had a great deal to do with that. She was always there in the back of his mind.
He could smell smoke. Searching for its probable location, he quickly assured himself that it was not the roof that was burning. Yet something was. A horse let out a high-pitched whinny of fear, more like a scream. Climbing around the ledge to the back of the house Miro saw that the stables had received a direct hit from an incendiary.
Spasms of fear pierced his stomach, but then he saw John racing across the cobbled yard. He was flinging open the stable doors and coaxing the mares out into the yard, giving each one a smack on the rump to make it gallop away in the dark. Miro wanted to go down and help, but the planes were circling overhead and incendiaries were falling around. One might land on the roof. He’d better stay. He could see Gramps running around with a torch. At that moment he saw a dull glow. An incendiary had landed on the roof of the communal stable closest to the army camp. Daunty was the only horse there. He was taken there at night to keep him as far from the mares as possible. The door lay open, but the horse was locked in his stall at the very end and judging by the high-pitched screams it was mad with fright.
‘The roof,’ he yelled. ‘Gramps! The stable roof’s alight. Get Daunty out.’
Could Gramps cope? He’d better go down. He scrambled through the window and leaped down the stairs. ‘The stable roof is burning,’ he yelled, as he passed. Gramps was right behind him, followed by Helen and Daisy. So who had let out the horses? As Miro raced across the yard, he could hear Daunty bucking and screaming as he lashed his hooves at the walls.
Unable to catch up, John was shouting at him, ‘Leave him, Miro. He’ll kill you. Get the hosepipe.’
Miro ran into the stable. Blinded by smoke he began to choke.
‘Get out of here,’ someone called. ‘Get out of the way fast.’ An American accent.
; Miro threw himself into a stall as the stallion reared over him. He heard a crash of splintering wood as it bucked and kicked the wall with his hooves. A whip cracked twice, then horse and rider swept through the stable door into the yard.
Coughing and retching, Miro stumbled after them. He leaned against the wall, gasping for air, watching Daunty showing his famous temper. Mad with fright, he leaped high, all four hooves off the ground, landed, bucked and reared, then plunged his head between his front feet and tossed his hind legs high, but the rider hung in there as if glued to his back.
‘Daunty! Calm down, Daunty,’ Daisy said, slowly approaching.
‘Get back, Daisy. Get away,’ the rider shouted. When Miro heard him call her name, he understood exactly who he was, the very same GI she had stayed with all evening at the Christmas ball. So he was still around. Trembling with rage, he watched Daunty try every trick he knew to unseat his strange rider and his heart went out to the frantic stallion. But what about the stable? For God’s sake, how long had he stood here like a lunatic while the fire took hold? Moments later he was running around the corner, a ladder over his shoulder, a sack in his hands to beat out the flames.
Daisy felt her fury rising as she watched Mike bring the frenzied stallion under control, until he ceased fighting and stood still, shuddering violently. She resented Mike’s extraordinary maleness and strength and his need to win against a poor beast twice his size which was scared out of its wits. He could have jumped off and left Daunty to race around the garden and slowly recover his cool, but he had to win. Just as he had wanted to win on that rainy day when he brought her home. She ran to the store and fetched a towel to rub the horse down. ‘Get off him, then,’ she snapped, noticing that he was barefooted and wearing only shorts and a shirt.
Mike, who had expected some favourable comments on his performance, was overcome with dismay. He dismounted and stood watching her rubbing down the horse, speaking softly to him.
‘It’s all right, Daunty. Miro’s putting out the fire. You’re safe. You’ll go back in your old stable tonight. What a fighter! What a stallion!’
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