They walked along the wide expanse of sandy beach hand in hand, breathing in the soft spring air, the sun warming them and making the sea shimmer to a clear and sparkling blue. Out in the bay stood St Michael’s Mount, its grandeur proclaiming that life would go on, war or no war; that nothing could destroy true beauty.
Sara said, ‘It started out as a Benedictine Priory, and has a twin in France, I believe.’
‘Yep, Mont St Michel in Normandy.’
Sara glanced at him quickly, noting a change in his tone of voice, realising that for some reason she’d made him think of something unpleasant. Guessing it was connected with the coming invasion, she slipped her arm through his and lightened her tone. ‘We used to come to Penzance for day trips when I was a child, visit Aunt Marjorie where we’d suffer one of those unendurably lengthy Sunday lunches in her stuffy house, and then be let loose to play on the beach. I thought this must be a fairy palace, and I would dig and dig, hoping to find treasure buried in the golden sands.’ She laughed. ‘I was a fanciful child.’
‘I imagine you were real cute.’
‘Cory always says this is the first safe harbour for anyone crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Isn’t that a lovely thought, that when a ship comes in here, they are confronted with all this beauty, this wide sweep of land and sea all the way from the Lizard to Land’s End. I can’t think of a better place to first discover Cornwall, can you? I hope Bette gets as a good welcome in the states.’
‘I hope so too.’
‘And in Newlyn, just down the coast, are where all the artists go, because of the light, you know?’
‘First you won’t talk to me at all, now you’re talking too much. Sara, if you’re not happy about this, if you want to change your mind, it’s ok.’
‘Oh, I am happy, really I am. I’m just a little nervous. Kiss me please, that will make me feel so much better.’
Laughing, he pulled her into his arms, then paused to lean away from her, a teasing look coming into his gentle brown eyes. ‘I can’t kiss you. You’re not wearing a kiss-me-quick-hat. This hat is very pretty but it’s also a very serious, proper sort of hat, not at all in keeping with this wild and wonderful setting. I’m sure it would object if I were to kiss you.’
Sara burst out laughing and pulling out the hat pin, whipped it off, shaking out a cloud of silver fair hair. She saw his eyes darken with desire but still he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he grabbed her by the hand and marched her very smartly along the sands.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere I can kiss you without a dozen kids and their grandmother’s watching. Somewhere I can take off more than that damned hat.’
‘Sorry to hear that Aunt Marjorie is ill,’ Hugh said to Sadie, a note of commiseration in his voice. He’d noticed Sara’s mother standing in a queue outside the butcher’s as he’d happened by, so took advantage of the meeting to stop for a short chat. Nothing to be lost by checking a few facts.
‘Aunt Marjorie?’
‘I’ve been abandoned for the weekend, while Sara goes to offer succour and comfort. I’ve been left holding the baby, as it were.
He laughed as he indicated the two children whom he had firmly in his grasp, one to each hand, in case they should take it into their silly heads to dash off somewhere, as children do. They looked very much as if they wanted to and Sadie said something to them, giving them both a kiss, while Hugh carefully watched her expression to see if she looked surprised or puzzled by this piece of information.
‘Sara always was very close to Marj,’ Sadie agreed, after a moment’s consideration, her eyes bland, carefully non-committal.
Hugh was deeply disappointed. He was highly suspicious of his wife’s sudden decision to head west, but couldn’t quite put his finger on why. He nodded and smiled again at Sadie, who seemed to be watching him closely. ‘Nothing serious, I trust,’ he continued, still fishing for information.
Sadie said, ‘She’s an old woman, bound to have her off days. Would you like me to come and cook something for you, Hugh, if you’re on your own?’
Panic hit him like a cold douche. ‘No, no, I can manage perfectly well. Sara has left food ready prepared, and Iris can always cook me something.’
‘Course she can,’ Sadie agreed. ‘Very handy at cooking things up, is Iris Logan.’
Sadie was beginning to get the picture now, to understand why her daughter had come begging for a bed. But whose bed was she in tonight, that was the interesting question?
Hugh came to an instant decision that it was time to move on, make his excuses and leave. The conversation had not gone quite as he would have wished, and he’d elicited no further information from Sadie at all. It was only later that he realised he’d missed an opportunity to ask her to mind the children. If Sadie would have them, then he could follow Sara, surprise her by turning up at Aunt Marjorie’s with an offer to help, or claim that he missed her. Maybe he should give that serious consideration.
The hotel was small and tucked away in a quiet corner of Marazion, the bedroom painted in an unprepossessing brown and cream and smelling faintly of fish.
‘Will you be wanting an evening meal?’ enquired the landlady, looking down her long nose as Charlie signed them in as Mr and Mrs Smith. ‘I could do you a bit of haddock.’
‘No, thank you. We’ll get something in town.’
‘There won’t be anything open late, save for the chippy, so you’d best get yourself a high tea. No one will be serving lunch now.’ Making it sound as if they’d planned the entire day wrong. ‘Were you wanting to see your room right away?’
Charlie smiled, using all his charm. ‘If that wouldn’t be too much trouble.’
Sara didn’t know how she managed to keep her face straight.
‘Here you are then,’ she said, flinging open the door. ‘The bathroom is just down the hall. I’ll be downstairs if you want anything, though I don’t suppose you will.’
‘I didn’t expect it to be quite this dreadful,’ Charlie mourned, the minute she’d gone, chin held high and her disapproval made plain in the rigid line of her back bone. ‘Not particularly romantic, is it? I though it might be more discreet to stay in a small place but I wish I’d found something more grand for you.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. We’re together, that’s all that counts. Anyway, how could it be other than awful, there is a war on you know,’ laughingly mimicking Nora Snell.
‘God, if I hear that phrase one more time. . .’ He took off his jacket and slung it over a chair. ‘Come here, I’m going to kiss you as you’ve never been kissed before.’
He kept his word. Sara was dazed by his kisses, by his sweet loving, yet he was making no move to rush her into something more, sensing she wasn’t quite ready. They lay together on the bed, content to be at last in each other’s arms, to kiss and caress and talk the kind of nonsense that lover’s do.
Later, after they’d freshened up, they took a stroll around the town, enjoying exploring the narrow streets, the quaint little shops and cottages, and seemingly around every corner could be glimpsed the vista of that wide bay and St Michael’s Mount. They found a small café which served them a delicious meal of ham and eggs, followed by Cornish splits, home-made jam and real clotted cream. It was the most delicious meal Sara had ever tasted, all washed down by endless cups of scalding tea.
‘Perhaps there isn’t a war on, after all.’
‘For tonight there isn’t, not here in Marazion, not for us.’
Arms wrapped about each other, they walked until darkness fell, talking and talking, mainly about the war and how they prayed it would soon come to an end. Charles thought Hitler’s biggest mistake was in not invading England, perhaps out of the misguided illusion that the British would sue for peace.
‘Anyone with any sense would know that you Brits never roll over and play dead. But back in forty-two he had the chance to make his move. Victory had seemed to be in the Führer’s grasp. Now he’s facing the reality that an
Allied invasion will be the final battle.’
‘And we will win, won’t we? And you will stay safe?’
‘We will win, my darling, and then I shall come home for you.’
They didn’t talk about Hugh, or how this miracle might be achieved. Nor did they speak of the future. Much easier to deal with the practical, the here and now, to remain positive and not give in to gloom.
And then as the cool of night set in, it was time to go back to the hotel. The moment that Sara had longed for so much, and yet feared because of the irrevocable step she was about to take, had finally arrived.
Chapter Thirty
The truck drew to a halt in a cloud of dust and Bette looked around her, bewildered. ‘Are we here?’
‘Yep.’
She climbed down from the truck, rather stiff after all her travelling, and gazed upon the house. This was not at all how she’d imagined it would be. It was certainly large, a long, low building, built of wood, clapboard Chad called it. It was clean but shabby and looked in dire need of a lick of paint but big enough to hold goodness knows how many rooms to accommodate Chad’s family. All along one side ran an open porch that held a couple of rocking chairs and a sagging sofa, and off the end a huddle of outbuildings that looked about to fall down.
There were screen doors, to keep out the flies, he explained, which opened straight into the family kitchen. A young boy ran out, fourteen or fifteen years old, with a shock of sandy red hair and a wide grin on his face. He didn’t speak to her but grabbed her bags and hurried back indoors with them, almost falling over his own feet as he kept his eyes fixed on her the entire time.
Bette heard a woman’s voice within start fussing about a wood burning stove having gone out, issuing orders to the boy, apparently called Jake, who turned out to be Chad’s younger brother, to ‘fetch some chips from the wood store real quick.’
Nobody emerged to welcome her, a telling omission which seemed to embarrass Chad more than her.
Bette hovered on the porch, hot and sticky in the heat, while he went inside to exchange a few, hasty words with the woman, his mother, she presumed. She felt thoroughly bemused, not knowing quite what she should do. What on earth had made her imagine that she was coming to a grand mansion, but that was surely how Chad had described his home to her, back in Fowey?
‘Is this one of those ante-bellum houses you talked of, with servants and fine furniture?’ she asked, when he came back out again.
He laughed, and she saw that he was embarrassed, denying ever having said that he lived in such a place, that she must have misunderstood, then offered to show her round while his mother got the place tidy. ‘We ain’t used to visitors and Mom has been busy with outdoor chores all morning, too busy to come into town but she sure can’t wait to meet you.
‘Likewise,’ said Bette, without too much conviction. Her heart was sinking deeper by the minute and she was beginning to feel quite sick with hunger.
When he’d told her that he owned land, she’d imagined a great sprawling estate, surrounded by similar houses, either in or quite close to a town. As he walked her around to the back of the house, Chad now told her that the family owned a hundred acres or so, nowhere near as much as she’d expected, Nor was it apparently of the rich, agricultural variety owned by those folk who lived in the valleys lower down the mountain. From what she could see, she would agree. This was nothing more than a dusty, dry farm with a few ramshackle outbuildings and an old barn, mainly open to the weather, in which stood an ancient, broken down tractor.
‘Does it work?’ she asked, scraping off a patch of rust with her fingernail.
‘Sure, she goes fine, on a good day. Sometimes though, nothin’ will get her going, jest like a woman.’
Bette made no comment to this. ‘You told me that you owned so much land you couldn’t even see the end of it, that it stretched right to the horizon and was as big as Fowey and Golant and Lostwithiel put together.’
‘Naw, you got that wrong, hon. I said some folks in the States owned that much land. I didn’t say we did.’
She bit back an instinctive reaction to argue. Where was the point? Either she’d misunderstood, or he’d misled her. What did it matter now? it was all far too late. Bette set the issue aside with a sigh. ‘So what do you do with it? Do you grow potatoes, cabbages and such like?’ Half her mind was still on food, which someone would surely bring out soon. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.
‘We grow corn mostly, some vegetables and tomatoes. The major crop in this state is peaches, of course. South Carolina is the nation's biggest producer of peaches but we don’t do so well with them this high up. We keep a few chickens and turkeys, dairy cows, hogs and calves mostly.’
Bette thought that if she’d had to own a farm, she would much rather have grown peaches than suffer all the fuss and mess of animals. Her mouth was watering at the thought.
But this wasn’t at all how she’d imagined her life in America would be, living on a small, decrepit farm. She could have done that perfectly well in Cornwall. She began to understand what he’d meant now by a two-bit town. The one where she’d been interviewed on the wireless had possessed little more than a general store and a petrol station. Though small as it might be, at least there were people there, and Chad had somehow failed to mention just how many miles it was from his home. As they’d driven here in the pick-up, she’d seen no sign of another dwelling, save for the odd wooden shack. Where on earth had he brought her?
‘Does the farm make a good living?’
‘We get by.’ Which didn’t sound particularly encouraging.
‘I thought all you grew down south was sugar.’
‘Heck no, that’s on the big plantations way down in the deep south. They grow cotton too, of course. Up here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, It can get mighty cold in winter and spring is often slow in coming.’
So she would have to suffer severe cold as well as intense heat. Looking around her, Bette felt as if she’d been set down in the middle of a wilderness. It was certainly beautiful with its rolling hills and deep forests, rich with the green of late spring but the stillness and remoteness of the area, the whole vastness of it, filled her with a strange sense of trepidation. She certainly wouldn’t care to be alone up here, miles from anywhere.
‘Wouldn’t you rather live somewhere more exciting, like New York or Washington?’
‘Heck no, I love this old place. It’s my home. Yours too now.
‘Yes,’ Bette said. ‘I suppose it is.’
And now they were alone together in a room they were, apparently, to share. Chad cupped her face with his hand and kissed her, then slipped his arm about her shoulders and kissed her again, with more enthusiasm this time.
It was a warm, loving kiss, not unpleasant in any way but she felt oddly shy with him after all this time, and her heart plummeted with dismay. Even his kisses weren’t quite as she remembered them. Where was the excitement, the thrill that she’d once experienced? All she felt was a deep sadness. Was that because he could only hold her in an awkward, one-armed embrace, or had all her love for him quite gone, leaving only pity in its wake.
‘It sure is good to have you here. You don’t mind sharing a bed right from the start, do you?’ he quietly asked her, and the glitter in his eyes spoke of his need and excitement at the prospect.
‘No, I don’t mind.’
‘Even though we’re not wed? Only we don’t have no spare rooms for guests. Packed to the rafters we are. Won’t trouble you none, will it? I swear I won’t touch you, hon, not till you feel ready. You must be plum tuckered out, for one thing. And Mom and Pop have no objection to our sleeping together, so I reckon it’ll be ok.’ Just as if their opinion mattered more than hers.
‘That’s good,’ Bette agreed, for want of something better to say.
She was surprised that his family were so broad minded on the subject, and also on her own account, not sure that she was quite ready to sleep with him yet. But how
could she say as much now that she was here, and about to confess to carrying his child. What possible excuse could she give?
Bette assured him that since they were soon to be man and wife, and since there was no alternative accommodation available, sharing a bed didn’t trouble her in the slightest. She kissed him soundly, to prove the sincerity of her words, striving to pretend that she was as keen as he was.
She wished he would go and leave her in peace for a while, give her time to adjust to all that had happened to her this day but he just stood there, smiling shyly, not quiet knowing what to say.
‘We thought you were dead, Barney and I. We were told you were missing, believed killed in action.’
A shadow seemed to darken his face and Bette wished instantly that she’d not reminded him of that painful time. Then the words seemed to gush out of him, as if she’d tapped a spring.
‘Many men were killed at Slapton Sands, I know it. I feel sure of it. Not that anyone’s admitting to it, ya know. They’re pretending the training was all a great success, that nothing went wrong, but we survivors know that it went badly wrong. They messed up good and proper. I remember we set off at the right time, first light, as we’d been ordered to, but the other units didn’t join us. There were delays, something to do with the landing craft not arriving when expected and everyone was held back till later. Unfortunately, the message didn’t get to us in time, so we went anyway. The navy were there, I remember we spotted them, and then all hell broke loose. I don’t remember a damned thing after that, not till I woke up in that hospital bed weeks later.’
She wanted to stop the memories now, put a lid on them and lock them away so she wouldn’t again see his face twist with pain. ‘Well you’re safe home now, that’s all that matters. Best to forget it.’
‘No it isn’t. I can’t forget. I mustn’t. They shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have bungled it as they did.’ His tone was harsh, bitter with regret. ‘All my mates – all those young lives. I was lucky, I only lost an arm, broke a leg that mended pretty good, barring a bit of a limp when it aches. Many guys lost much more, were burned, blinded, killed. God knows!’
For All Our Tomorrows Page 23