Dancing with Artie (Thaddeus Hunloke Book 1)

by Pete Heathmoor

  On the opposite side of the room lay a worn leather Chesterfield couch and from its embrace jumped a woman excitedly to her feet. She wore a long white cotton skirt with a matching embroidered jacket. Her auburn hair was worn loose, cascading over her narrow shoulders. To Brian she appeared a stunning beauty, and yet her face seemed to morph constantly by some cinematic trickery. One moment she was the image of Christine Baldwin, the next a woman he did not recognise.

  “Did anyone see you?” she asked quickly.

  “No, I’m quite sure no one did,” he answered nervously.

  “Good, we don’t have long...” She smiled and slid up to him.

  “I’m not sure about this, Connie,” he whispered. He wondered how he knew the unfamiliar person’s name. Yet she was no stranger. How could he desperately want someone he didn’t know?

  “Hush now...” She placed a raised finger to his lips. “You know you want to.”

  “I’m not so sure...” He fought the longing that inflamed his heart.

  “I promise to be gentle with you. There’s a first time for everything, my darling. I’m sure you will enjoy it...”

  She looked ravishing and he offered no resistance when she tugged his face down to hers and kissed him. At first, he attempted to oppose her onslaught but found himself vacillating under her ardent assault. She was all he had ever wanted, in his dreams in the dugouts of Flanders and the wakeful nights of patrolling no-man’s-land. His dream had come true. Now she wanted him.

  Five minutes later a shocked lieutenant found himself sitting inelegantly upon the sofa, his clothes disarrayed in an indecent manner. Fighting for his breath, his heart pounding against his ribs, he felt a heady mixture of sated delight and shame.

  Constance eased herself free from him. He watched her grinning face whilst she inspected and licked her fingers, which she had dabbed at the region of her body that had so consumed his mind until his moment of release and ecstasy. How cruel that his joy was to be followed so quickly by the sense of ignominy. She adjusted the layers beneath her calf-length skirt. She looked flushed with the vibrancy of passion and authority.

  “I’ll leave first, darling. Give me five minutes before you follow.” She smiled down tenderly into his troubled face. “Don’t worry, my love, considering it was your first time, you were very good. It could have been much worse... You’re so much better than Tommy. The poor darling can’t even raise so much as a smile these days...”

  She blew him a kiss before leaving the observatory.

  “Are you alright, Mr Conway?”

  Brian Conway’s eyes opened in an instant before snapping shut again. He felt disorientated; his heart was beating a rapid tattoo, his blood pulsating at his temples. “I’m not a coward, Connie... I’m as much a man as Hunloke! I’m not a coward...!” His words emerged as restrained shouts from his deep subconscious. “I... am... not... a... coward!”

  “No one is saying you’re a coward. And I’m Poppy, not Connie.” She gently placed a hand upon his shoulder. “Wake up, Brian, wake up...”

  He opened his eyes and glanced feverishly up at the silhouetted figure of Poppy Gray standing by his bed in the darkness of his bedroom. “I... I... was...,” he jabbered.

  “Dreaming, Brian, you were dreaming... now breathe slowly and deeply. You were making rather a lot of noise. I don’t want you disturbing the others... hush now and go back to sleep. You’re quite safe...” She sat down on the bed and tightened the belt of her thick dressing gown. She placed her cool hand on his fevered brow and ran her fingers through his unkempt hair. After a moments caressing, he made no objection when she arranged herself beside him on top of the bed. “I didn’t mean to do it... She made me do it... she was so beautiful, I love her so much,” came his little boy lost voice.

  “Hush, now, go to sleep,” whispered Poppy whilst consolingly running her hand through his damp hair.

  Chapter 16 - Flash Chapel.

  Wednesday, 29th November 1944.

  Hunloke awoke the next morning at six o’clock. He rightly assumed there was hot water available and took a swift bath. He donned the first clean clothes since his arrival in Derbyshire and felt refreshed and invigorated by his actions. For some reason, he made use of the cologne residing in the bathroom.

  He wasn’t surprised to find Poppy Gray in the refectory before him at six thirty. She always seemed to pre-empt his every move. “Another chilly and foggy day in Derbyshire, Artie,” announced Poppy.

  “Indeed it is, Mrs Gray, indeed it is.”

  Poppy noticed his smarter than normal appearance, the freshness of his body and the fragrance of her husband’s cologne. He had yet to apply Brylcreem and the soft, recently washed hair gave him a more youthful appearance, if one discounted the scar, to which she had to admit one quickly became accustomed. He took a seat to her left on the long side of the table with his back to the fire.

  “You appear to be in a much better mood than yesterday,” she commented. “Breakfast won’t be ready until seven. There is tea in the pot, help yourself.”

  “That’s probably because I never met my friend Tommy last night.”

  “Met?”

  “Come on, Poppy, I know the difference between a dream and not a dream.”

  “So what was it then?”

  “Who knows, and to be honest, I’ve got better things to worry about,” he answered with truthful equivocation.

  “The escaped Germans?”

  “Yes, we’re searching the estate this morning, making sure no one is lurking where they shouldn’t be before we set the men back to work.”

  “Excellent. That means they might be able to finish re-pointing the inner courtyard wall. Leaks like a sieve, apparently. By the way, I didn’t tell you last night because you were so grumpy.”

  “I wasn’t grumpy, I was... Preoccupied. Tell me what?”

  “Well whatever you were, I’ve asked Carey Gladwin to help out whilst you’re staying here.”

  He looked up from pouring the tea into his cup and saw the flicker of a smile appear on her pursed lips. “Help out?”

  “Yes, poor old Trotter and his wife can’t do everything, bless them. Carey has agreed to stay at the house and lend a hand.”

  He looked at her with a baffled look on his face as if he couldn’t quite make out whether he liked the idea or not. The notion of Carey staying at Flash appealed to him but not the idea of her working. “You mean as a skivvy?”

  “A skivvy? I simply asked her to help out. She’s more than happy to help. I do pay well,” she answered with a smile, reading his mind. “Do top me up...” Hunloke obligingly poured tea from the brown earthenware teapot with the knitted cosy. “I had a chat with Christine last night, after you had retired.”

  “I didn’t retire, I went to bed. Only your sort retires.” His comment was typically cynical but delivered in a good-natured way. “So what did she say? Spout some left-wing nonsense that her brother Jimmy had told her about a better country after the war. Better watch out, or this pile will be nationalised for the common good.”

  “She’s pregnant...”

  Hunloke looked up and met Poppy’s gaze, her hazel eyes glinting in the glow from the fire. “Pregnant?”

  “Yes, after dallying with some American before he was packed off to Europe.”

  “Were you supposed to tell me that? Did she not tell you in confidence?” His reply was measured.

  “You surprise me, Hunloke from the Camp. I thought you’d be shocked or angry.”

  “Why? I see it all the time. Lads packed off to the front, desperate to ‘do it’ before they leave. Men have a strange notion that dying a virgin is a greater tragedy than simply dying. You can’t blame them. I’ve seen them around the stations in London, tops of buses, shop doorways, parks. You name it. An old sergeant told me that during the last war, there were groups of elderly moralist who would go around attempting to break up courting couples. It seems that they became as big a menace as the courting couples themselves. Even a
parting kiss could bring down the wrath of rectitude.”

  “I take it you’re not surprised then...”

  “Surprise has nothing to do with it. I’m disappointed for her, but I won’t be judgmental. Some wise old head was once realistic enough to say that when men engage in the amoral frenzy of bloodletting, so the women folk respond with a lowering of the conventional mores of perceived morality, a morality that actually protects women from the downside of playing around, that is disease and unwanted pregnancy. A cynic might say that as the death rate in society increases, so the urge to procreate proportionately increases.”

  “Quite the barrack room expert, aren’t we?” she grinned.

  “Soldiering isn’t all about ordering men to squeeze a trigger. It’s also about managing garrison life and boredom.”

  “By the way, I didn’t break her confidence. I never said I wouldn’t say anything. She’s frightened and confused. You know she’s in love with the lieutenant?”

  “Blimey, a blind man can see how the two of them feel about each other. Does Brian know?”

  “No...”

  “Probably just as well, he’s an emotionally stifled grammar school boy; the war has done Brian few favours.”

  “Quite the analyst, aren’t we?”

  “Like I said, leading a company makes you appraise men’s attributes.”

  “And what are Mr Conway’s?”

  “A product of the grammar school system. Fiercely loyal to his superiors. Endowed with the notion of self-sacrifice and service to the Empire. He’s probably more pro-royal than your lot.”

  “My lot...?”

  “Your lot reap the benefits of society without quite having to get involved. You’re independent enough to have your own opinions and principles without kow-towing to any lord or lady.”

  “I’m afraid the Grays don’t really rate much of a mention in Debretts, Artie. Anyway, what are we going to do about them?”

  “‘We’? What am I supposed to do?”

  “You said being a company commander is more than ordering men to squeeze a trigger.”

  “I’m not a bloody matchmaker. I’m trying to find escaped POW’s!”

  “The match is made...,” she declared assertively.

  “She’s pregnant...”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” she insisted angrily. It was a side of Violet Gray that he had never before witnessed and he found it quietly amusing.

  “Will Brian still fancy her when he realises she has a bun in the oven? Or should that be a Yank doughnut in the fryer?”

  Poppy scowled disapprovingly.

  “What...? So I’m supposed to treat her with kid gloves, am I?” he answered indignantly.

  “No, just treat her normally! I’ll work on Mr Conway.”

  “Jesus, woman. There’s a war to be won!”

  “I am not ‘woman’, I am Poppy! You all seem so fixated on the bloody war that you forget to live!” Poppy scowled at Hunloke, prompting an unexpected reaction. He laughed.

  As ever, morning roll call had to be completed before the guarding troops could be released to comb the estate. The fog hung heavily over the camp; the natural boggy conditions of the surrounding area stocked the atmospheric miasma. Water dripped from the eaves of the older buildings whilst the Nissan huts glistened with condensed moisture in the subdued light.

  The POW’s huddled restlessly like racehorses before a race. Their enforced confinement to camp had made many of them appreciate their work duties and they were keen to resume the pre-escape routine. They were aware that today might be the last day of incarceration and even the normally truculent POW’s appeared perversely compliant to the guards’ instructions.

  Hunloke chose to allow Sergeant Donovan to conduct the count unfettered by his own presence and the tally was made in a record time for Flash Camp. All present and correct save for the two men on the run. Only six cases requested a visit to the sickbay and the camp doctor. Hunloke stood watching the proceedings from the security of the guard compound. In his hand, he already clutched the map of the estate detailing the proposed search areas.

  By ten o’clock, sixty men from the two stood down platoons assembled outside the camp on the concrete strip where miraculously, a replacement Bedford truck stood. The stalwart Donovan was in charge of the search teams and briefed the men according to Hunloke’s instructions.

  Priority would be given to the buildings on the estate. Other than Flash House, the manor boasted a dozen or so tithed cottages. Five currently lay unoccupied. The chapel, the outlying semi-derelict stable block, and sawmill all required investigation.

  Hunloke decided he and Conway along with one guard would search the chapel and to this end, he had procured a set of keys from Poppy Gray. Any potential sighting of the prisoners was to be signalled by three rapid shots to draw the attention of the other search parties.

  An unusually subdued Christine drove the group to the chapel. Conway was likewise reticent, both appeared preoccupied with their thoughts and Hunloke doubted it was the presence of the private with the name of Halfpenny that encouraged their silence. Private Henry Halfpenny, wounded veteran of El Alemein, sat in the front passenger seat of the Austin awkwardly supporting his nine pounds of Lee-Enfield rifle. The four feet length of the firearm required careful positioning inside the cramped vehicle.

  The Austin graunched to a halt on the tarmac road beside the towering monkey-puzzle tree that had at first so enthralled Christine. Opposite the car lay the path that headed off through the trees to the chapel.

  The pathway wound its way through a section of older deciduous silver birch and screening evergreen yews, the gravelled track appeared to be in a state of neglect and disrepair. Clumps of grass and moss colonised the compacted gravel.

  The saturated air atop the escarpment accompanied them as the footpath looped downwards. In spite of their belief that the chapel lay empty, they proceeded with caution, their pace dictated by Hunloke’s plodding limp. The captain insisted that Halfpenny left his rifle with the safety catch on, for the veteran’s nervous swinging of his weapon elicited little confidence. They suddenly found themselves standing on the edge of a deep gully that plummeted away some forty feet beneath them.

  “Good God!” exclaimed Conway. Each member of the party froze and stared disbelievingly, beholding the splendour that was the private chapel and mausoleum of the Gray family.

  The limestone facing material employed during the construction of Flash House had been quarried from within the estate itself. These workings, first started in the medieval period, had been carved from a natural watercourse that over the millennia had gouged a deep gorge through the estate where the water scoured its way westwards down towards the River Derwent.

  The entrepreneurial Gray family decided to make a feature of the disused excavations, landscaping the workings to afford the gully a contrived aspect as if it had been wholly designed by serendipity alone. Yet the restless energies of the family were not content to leave the gully, as it became known, completely given over to nature. The Grays were High Church of England, followers of the Oxford Movement, and in a fit of religious piety conceived the idea of building their own private chapel.

  Inspired by the Gothic architecture of Sainte Chapelle in Paris, the chapel at Flash, finally completed in 1872, was a hidden gem of late Victorian idealism. Over the years, nature had once again reclaimed the quarry. Time had softened the artifice of the man-made gorge until the stunning chapel appeared to rise from the gully as though organically nurtured from the surrounding topography.

  To enable the family worshipers to access the chapel from the top of the gully, the chapel had been raised up from the valley floor, so creating a crypt for the last resting place of the family members. Adhering to the conventional east/west alignment, the walls along the longitudinal axis were perforated with three high Gothic arched windows topped with curvilinear tracery and paned with fine stained glass.

  Alongside the windows rose fi
ve columns forming supporting flying buttresses, each adorned with ornate studded pinnacles. A steeply pitched red tiled roof, now aged by exposure to moss and lichens, sat imposingly above the weathered limestone.

  At the van, Hunloke guided his team along an overgrown flagstone path, following the ridge of the gulley to the end of the chapel. Here, a raised arched bridge ascended from the quarry floor to broach the great oak door, not unlike a causeway across a defensive moat to a medieval castle’s gatehouse.

  The House of God was possibly Sir Gervais Montclair’s finest yet least known work.

  “I’m lost for words,” stammered Conway, “it’s amazing...”

  “You keep your mind on looking for the Hun and not goggling at a damned fancy church,” said Hunloke sharply. In truth, he too felt in awe of the building but didn’t share Conway’s sentiments regarding the notion of the building’s supernatural pretentions.

  The captain was unaware that Christine had sidled up close to Conway. Both of them could only stare up at the white scoured limestone blocks of the north wall. Christine was able to make out little detail of the stained glass windows, for the interior of the chapel was in darkness on this gloomy November day. She smiled at the sight of the gnarled gargoyles adorning the tops of the walls, reminiscent of the mansion.

  Hunloke paused on what he called the drawbridge. He was flanked by Private Halfpenny, who Hunloke was relieved to see appeared indifferent to the presence of the chapel. Even the wonder of the Great Pyramid of Giza had failed to stir Henry Halfpenny, so Sir Gervais Montclair’s offering stood no chance.

  Edging to the side of the stone drawbridge, Hunloke peered down towards the bottom of the sparsely grassed gorge. Leafless birch tress sprouted and birds flitted energetically amongst the undergrowth in search of sustenance.

  Assured of their seclusion, Hunloke inserted the key in the substantial door and was surprised by the lightness of the locking mechanism. He was unsure of what possessed him but there was a distinct theatricality to the way he threw open the right hand door to the accompaniment of the creaking wrought iron hinges.